V 


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BX  7233  .B8  S43  11 
Bushne 1 1 ,  Horace , 
Sermons  on  living 


77 

1802-1876. 

subjects 


SEE^IOISTS 


ON 


Living  Subjects 


HORACE     I]  US  UN  ELL. 


IS'EW   YORK: 
SCR1BNER,    ARMSTRONG    &   CO. 

1877. 


COFYTtlGHT,    1876,    BY 

MARY     A.      BOSH  NELL. 


Trow's 
Printing  and  Bookbinding  Company, 
205-213  East  \?.:!i  St., 

NEW     YORK. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


In  selecting:  this  volume  of  sermons,  I  have  not  been 
swayed  by  any  desire  to  give  them  a  common  character, 
as  related  to  some  common  subject,  but  I  have  allowed 
them  to  be  strictly  promiscuous ;  that  is,  to  be  what  they 
will  be,  taken  each  one  by  itself.  The  title  I  have  chosen, 
not  as  giving  in  to  that  faulty  kind  of  preaching  which 
makes  it  a  principal  aim  to  be  handling  subjects,  but  be- 
cause every  printed  sermon  must  have  a  subject,  and  when 
offered  to  the  public,  ought  to  have  some  reference  to  the 
living  questions  and  practical  wants  of  the  times. 

Quite  a  number  of  the  discourses  have  been  preached  in 
the  Chapel  at  Yale,  and  in  several  cases  I  have  preferred 
to  let  the  special  marks  remain,  without  taking  the  nec- 
essary trouble  to  remove  them,  only  noting  the  fact  by  a 
Y.  C.  C.  at  the  bottom  of  the  page.  Two  of  the  dis- 
courses, the  XVII  and  the  XXII,  have  never  been 
preached.  H.  B. 


UNIFORM      EDITION 

OK   THE    SELECT   WORKS   OT 

HORACE   BUSHNELL,  D.D. 


Each   l   vol.    \?mo,  per  vol.    $1.50. 
AND    TO    1NCLUDK 

CHRISTIAN  NURTURE. 
SERMONS    FOR    THE    NEW   LIFE. 
CHRIST  AND  HIS  SALVATION. 
SERMONS  OX  LIVING  SUBJECTS. 
VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.     Vol.  I. 
VICARIOUS  SACRIFICE.     Vol.11. 
NATURE    AND     THE   SUPERNATURAL. 


SCRIBNER,  ARMSTRONG  &  CO., 

PUBLISHERS, 
743  and  745  Broadway,  New  York. 


CONTENTS. 


i. 

MARY,    THE   MOTHER   OF   JESUS. 
Luke  1 :    28. — "  And    the    angel    came    in    unto   her  and   said, 
Hail,    thou   that   art    highly   favored,    the   Lord   is  with   thee ; 
blessed   art   thou   among  women." 9 

II. 

LOVING  GOD  IS  BUT  LETTING  GOD  LOVE  US. 

I  John  4:  16. — "And  we  have  known  and  believed  the  love 
that  God   hath   to   us." 37 

III. 

FEET   AND   WINGS. 
Ezekiel  1 :  24. — "  When  they  stood,  they  let  down  their  wings."     55 

IV. 

THE   GOSPEL   OF   THE   FACE. 

II  Cor.  4 :  6. — "  For  God  who  commanded  the  light  to  shine 
out  of  darkness  hath  shined  in  our  hearts,  to  give  the 
light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of 
Jesus    Christ." 73 

V. 

THE   COMPLETING   OF   THE  SOUL. 
Col.  2:  10. — "And  ye  are   complete   in   him  which  is  the  head 

of  all  principality  and  power." 96 

1*  (5) 


VI  CONTENTS. 

VI. 

THE    IMMEDIATE   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD. 

I  Cor.  15:  34. — "For  some  have  not  the  knowledge  of  God."..   114 

VII. 

RELIGIOUS     NATURE     AND     RELIGIOUS    CHAR- 
ACTER. 

Acts  17:  27. — "That  they  should  seek  the  Lord,  if  haply 
they  might  feel  after  him  and  find  him,  though  he  be  not  far 
from   every  one   of  us.-' 129 

VIII. 

THE     PROPERTY      RIGHT     WE     ARE     TO     GET     IN 
SOULS. 

II  Cor.  12:   14. — "For  I  seek  not  yours, but  you." 148 

IX. 

THE    DISSOLVING   OF   DOUBTS. 
Daniel  5:   16. — "And    I    have    heard    of    thee,  that  thou  canst 
make   interpretations   and   dissolve   doubts." 166 

X. 

CHRIST   REGENERATES   EVEN   THE    DESIRES. 
Mark  10:  35. — "And   James   and   John,  the   sons  of  Zebedee, 
came  unto  him  saying,   Master,   we  would   that  thou  shouldest 
do  for  us  whatsoever  we  shall  desire." 185 

XI. 

A   SINGLE  TRIAL   BETTER   THAN   MANY. 
Heb.  9:  27. — "And   as    it    is    appointed    unto  men  once  to  die, 
but  after  this  the  judgment 205 


CONTENTS.  Vii 

XII. 

SELF-EXAMINATION    EXAMINED. 
Ps.  26:    2. — ''Examine   me,     0    Lord,    and   prove    me,    try    my 
reins  and   my  heart." 224 

XIII. 

HOW   TO   BE   A   CHRISTIAN   IN  TRADE. 
Mattii.  25:   16. — "Then   he   that   had    received   the  five  talents 
went  and    traded  with    the   same,  and   made   them   other  five 
talents." 243 

XIV. 

IN   AND    BY  THINGS  TEMPORAL   ARE   GIVEN 
THINGS   ETERNAL. 
II  Cor.  4:   18. — "While  we    look,  not    at    the  things  which  are 
seen,  but    at  the  things  which    are  not  seen ;    for    the    things 
which    are  seen  are  temporal,  but   the   things   which    are  not 
seen  are  eternal." 268 

XV. 

GOD   ORGANIZING   IN    THE    CHURCH   HIS   ETER- 
NAL  SOCIETY. 

Heb.  12:  22-3. — "  But  ye  are  come  unto  Mount  Zion,  and  unto 
the  city  of  the  living  God,  the  heavenly  Jerusalem,  and  to  an 
innumerable  company  of  angels,  to  the  general  assembly  and 
church  of  the  first-born,  which  are  written  in  heaven,  and  to 
God  the  Judge  of  all,  and  to  the  spirits  of  just  men  made 
perfect." 285 

XVI. 

ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE   INDISPENSABLE. 
Matth.  6:    11. — "Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread." 308 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

XVII. 

OUR   ADVANTAGE   IN   BEING   FINITE. 
IIeb.  2 :   7. — "  Thou  madest  him  a  little  lower  than    the  angels, 
thou   crownedst   him    with    glory   and    honor,   and    didst  set 
him   over   the  works   of  thy   hands." 329 

XVIII. 

THE   OUTSIDE   SAINTS. 
Acts  10:  34-5. — "Of   a  truth   I  perceive   that    God   is  no   re- 
specter   of   persons.       But   in    every   nation,   he   that   feareth 
him   and   worketh   righteousness   is   accepted   with   him."....   352 

XIX. 

FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS,    AND   TOO   FREE   TO 
WANT   THEM. 

I  Cor.  10:  27. — "If  any  of  them  that  believe  not  bid  you 
to  a  feast,  and  ye  be  disposed  to  go,  whatever  is  set  be- 
fore you   eat,  asking   no    question    for    conscience'   sake."...   374 

XX. 

THE   MILITARY   DISCIPLINE. 

II  Tim.  2:  3-4. — "Thou  therefore  endure  hardness,  as  a  good 
soldier  of  Jesus  Christ.  No  man  that  warreth  eutangleth 
himself  with  the  affairs  of  this  life,  that  he  may  please 
him  who  hath   chosen   him   to   be   a   soldier." 397 

XXI. 

THE   CORONATION   OF   THE   LAMB. 
Rev.  22:   1. — "The   throne   of  God   and  of  the   Lamb." 418 

XXII. 

OUR    RELATIONS    TO    CHRIST    IN    THE    FUTURE 
LIFE. 

I  Cor.  15:  28. — "And  when  all  things  shall  be  subdued  unto 
him,  then  shall  the  Son  also  himself  be  subject  unto  him  that 
put  all  things  under  him,  that  God  may  be  all  in  all 442 


I. 

MARY,  IHE  MOTHER  OF  JESUS. 


"And  the  angel  came  in  unto  her  and  said,  Hail  thou  that  art  highly 
favored,  the  Lord  is  with  thee;  blessed  art  thou  among  women." — 
Luke  1:    28. 

What  an  angel  may  count  the  most  blessed  and 
dearest  lot  of  favor  to  befall  a  spotless  and  fair  young 
woman,  will  not  of  course  coincide  with  what  her 
mortal  well-wishers,  even  the  best  of  them,  might 
choose.  Probably  the  being  entered  into  such  a  story 
as  the  angel  here  opens  to  Mary,  in  a  strain  of  high  con- 
gratulation, would  be  regarded,  at  the  time,  by  scarcely 
any  one  as  a  thing  to  be  at  all  desired,  whatever  esti- 
mation might  be  had  of  the  honor  conferred,  after  ages 
of  history  have  shown  the  stupendous  significance  of 
the  event.  Mary  is  at  first  confused  and  troubled, 
"casting  in  her  mind  what  sort  of  salutation  this 
should  be,"  and  her  heavenly  visitor  has  much  to  do  to 
compose  her  fluttering  breast.  And  how  shall  he  do 
it  more  easily  than  by  telling  her  that  what  she  will 
receive  is  God's  reward.  "  Fear  not,  Mary,  for  thou 
hast  found  favor  with  God."  He  does  not  say,  ob- 
serve, that  the  favor  of  God  has  found  her,  but  that 
she  has  found  favor  with  him.     The  expression,  it  is 


10  MARY,   THE   MOTHER    OF   JESUS. 

true,  may  be  used  in  either  way,  to  indicate  what  God 
has  undertaken  to  do  for  her,  or  what  she  has  obtained 
by  the  suit  of  her  gentle,  sweet-minded  prayers.  It  is 
most  naturally  taken  in  this  latter  way ;  giving  us  to 
see  how  she  has  been  waiting  before  Him,  from  her 
tender  girlhood  onward,  asking  of  Him  grace  for  a 
good  life,  and  questioning  His  oracle  as  to  what  she  is 
to  do,  or  to  be.  She  has  read  the  prophets  too,  as  we 
may  judge,  and  her  feeling,  like  all  the  religious  feel- 
ing of  her  nation,  is  leavened  in  this  manner,  by 
indefinite  yearnings  for  the  coming  of  that  wonderful 
unknown  being  called  Messiah.  And  so  her  opening 
womanly  nature  has  been  stretching  itself  Messiah- 
ward,  and  configuring  itself  inwardly  to  what  the 
unknown  Great  One  is  to  be.  Sighing  after  him  thus, 
in  the  sweet  longings  of  her  prayers,  she  is  winning 
such  favor,  and  becoming  inwardly  akin  to  him  in 
such  degree,  as  elects  her  to  bear  the  promised  child 
of  the  skies,  and  be  set  in  a  properly  divine  mother- 
hood before  the  worlds !  Ah  yes,  Mary,  canst  thou 
believe  it?  that  which  the  prophets  of  so  many  ages 
drew  you  into  praying  for,  that  which  angels  in 
God's  highest  and  most  ancient  realms  have  been 
peering  from  above  to  look  into,  that  for  which  the 
fullness  of  time  has  now  come — that  special  thing  of 
God's  counsel,  supereminent  forever,  his  greatest 
miracle,  his  unmatched  wonder,  his  one  thing  absolute, 
which  lets  nothing  ever  come  to  pass  that  can  be  put 
into  class  with  it — even  that  thou  hast  gotten  a  call 
from  God  to  mediate  for  the  world,  bearing  it  as  thy 


MARY,    THE    MOTHER    OF   JESUS.  11 

Holy  Thing,  the  fruit  of  thy  sweet  life  and  maidenly 
prayers. 

I  do  not  undertake,  of  course,  to  say  that  Mary's 
prayers,  however  freighted  with  longings  after  Messiah 
to  come,  had  really  prevailed  with  God  to  be  incarnate, 
but  only  that  she  drew  to  herself,  by  her  singular  trust 
and  pure  spotlessness  of  devotion,  what  was  to  be  by 
some  one,  and  came  to  her  more  fitly  than  to  any 
other,  because  of  the  finer,  more  dear  quality  found  in 
her  life.  But  that  she  won  this  honor  does  not  take 
her  out  of  the  class  of  women,  or  entitle  her  in  any 
sense,  to  the  honors  of  worship.  It  lifts  her  truly 
enough  above  all  woman  or  even  human  kind,  and 
shows  her  touching  the  zenith  in  the  sky  of  God's 
honors,  where  no  other  mortal  ever  touched  before,  or 
probably  ever  will  in  the  future  ages.  Still  when  we 
say,  "  other  mortal,"  in  this  manner,  we  call  her 
mortal  too. 

There  has  been  a  large  recoil  of  unbelief,  as  we  all 
know,  from  these  first  chapters  of  Matthew  and  Luke, 
reciting  the  birth-story  of  the  incarnation.  How 
comes  it,  many  ask,  and  some  of  you  perhaps  are  in 
the  question  now — how  comes  it,  if  this  be  any  proper 
history  of  facts,  that  it  is  made  up  by  a  sifting  in  so 
largely  of  poetic  material — legendary  myths,  and  half- 
recollections  in  verse  ?  These  good  people,  having  no 
specially  poetic  gift,  talk  poetry,  all,  as  if  it  were  their 
element.  When  Mary,  on  a  visit  to  Elizabeth  up  in 
the  hill  country,  enters  and  offers  salutation,  she  breaks 
out,  on  a  sudden,  in  a  hymn  of  benediction.     Where' 


12  MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS. 

upon  Mary,  in  turn,  responds  in  her  famous  magnificat, 
occupying  ten  whole  verses  of  the  story.  Next  Zach- 
arias  celebrates  the  birth  of  John,  in  a  hymn  of  praise 
and  prophecy.  Then  the  angel,  coming  down  to 
notify  the  shepherds  that  Christ  is  born  at  Bethlehem, 
can  not  do  his  errand  without  putting  it  in  verse.  A 
grand  irruption  of  angels  follows,  filling  the  sky  with 
song  and  holy  gratulation,  which  they  too  put  in  He- 
brew verse.  Next  comes  the  aged  Simeon,  chanting 
his  nunc  dirnittis  over  the  divine  child  in  the  temple. 
Anna  the  prophetess  follows,  giving  "  thanks  to  God," 
in  words  not  given,  but  understood  to  be  in  verse. 

What  account  now  shall  we  make  of  this?  First, 
there  is,  we  must  observe,  so  great  facility  of  verse  in 
the  Hebrew  and  Syriac  tongues,  that  minds  but  a  very 
little  excited  almost  naturally  break  into  the  couplet 
form  of  utterance.  Next  the  incarnation  itself  is  an 
event  so  auspicious  and  glorious,  that  every  body  know- 
ing it  ought  to  be  taken  by  some  great  mental  commo- 
tion, lifted  by  some  unwonted  inspiration.  Any  most 
common  soul  ought  to  kindle  as  in  flame,  and  break  out 
in  poetic  improvisings.  Having  wings  in  the  religious 
outfit  of  our  nature,  it  would  even  be  a  kind  of  celes- 
tial impropriety,  if  God's  Spirit  did  not  spread  them 
here.  Why  the  very  ground  ought  to  let  forth  its 
reverberated  music,  and  all  the  choirs,  and  lyres,  and 
ringing  cymbals  of  the  creation,  between  the  two  hori- 
zons and  above,  ought  to  be  discoursing  hymns,  and 
pouring  down  their  joy,  even  as  the  stars  do  light !  It 
looks  very  strange  to  me  now,  that  I  once  hung  a  long 


MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF  JESUS.  13 

time  over  the  scandal  matter  of  these  poetic  episodes  ; 
till  finally  I  found  grace  to  make  the  discovery,  that 
they  are  exactly  what  and  where  they  ought  to  be, 
and  that,  instead  of  doubting,  I  ought  even  to  be  be- 
lieving, just  because  of  them.  They  are,  in  fact,  pro- 
prieties only  of  the  incarnation ;  for  what  have  we  in 
it  but  the  very  nearly  one  event  of  the  world  ?  This 
of  course  any  one  may  doubt  if  he  will,  but  no  sane 
person,  I  think,  can  deny  that  it  is  either  a  transaction 
so  great,  or  else  it  is  nothing.  It  may  not  be  a  fact, 
but  if  it  is,  which  is  the  exact  matter  here  assumed,  it 
can  not  be  less  than  what  these  incidents  and  demon- 
strations signify.  Furthermore,  I  will  even  dare  to 
aver,  that  the  manner  of  this  incarnation  story  is  nat- 
ural, as  it  could  be  in  no  other  possible  way,  and  is 
cast  in  a  form  of  the  strongest  possible  self-affirmation. 
It  comes  to  pass  in  just  the  only  way  conceivable,  or 
credible.  Thus  if  there  were  no  divine  election  here  of 
the  mother,  no  annunciation  to  her  of  her  office,  noth- 
ing but  a  birth,  whence  coming  or  how  she  could  not 
explain;  or  if  it  came  in  wedlock  unhymned,  bringing 
no  evidence  but  the  remarkable  quality  finally  to  be  dis- 
covered of  the  child  ;  or  if  it  were  a  possession  taken 
of  some  full  grown  man,  to  be  divinely  empowered 
and  set  on  by  the  visibly  deific  forces  bodied  in  him  ; 
who  could  ever  become  certified  of  an  incarnation  ac- 
complished under  any  such  conditions  ?  Besides,  the 
very  word  itself  implies  a  visible  insphering  in  flesh, 
and  how  can  that  be  accomplished  without  a  birth 
into  it  ?  and  how  that,  without  a  divine  overshadow  to 
2 


14  MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS. 

quicken  and  matriculate  that  birth?  In  short,  there 
must  be  a  Mary  in  the  process,  or  it  will  not  be  done. 
And  then  just  all  the  wonders  of  story  and  music  of 
song  that  were  staggering  our  faith,  are  seen  to  be 
only  the  proper  all-hail,  or  fit  salutation  of  the  advent 
made. 

At  this  point  my  subject,  which  is  Mary  the  mother 
of  Jesus,  takes  a  most  remarkable  turn  that  we  might 
not  have  expected.  Suddenly,  as  it  were  at  once,  she 
drops  out  of  improvising,  out  of  song  and  singing  joy, 
into  a  very  nearly  total  and  dumb  silence ;  giving  us 
to  hear  no  spoken  word  again,  save  in  a  very  few  syl- 
lables and  but  twice  in  her  whole  after-life.  The 
magnificat  she  chanted  in  the  hill  country  was  her  last, 
as  it  was  her  first,  improvising,  the  swan  song,  as  Ave 
may  call  it,  of  her  life.  She  and  her  husband,  "  mar- 
veled," we  are  told,  "  at  those  things  that  were 
spoken  "  of  the  child,  in  the  scores  of  hymn  and  music 
offered  for  him  in  the  temple  ;  and  at  that  point  they 
dropped  into  still  life,  as  it  were  by  paralysis,  never 
once  to  speak  of  their  extraordinary  son,  or  testify  any 
least  impression  of  his  remarkable  person,  or  story,  or 
gifts,  or  office.  Things  were  occurring,  no  doubt, 
every  day,  by  which  he  was  differed  more  and  more 
widely  from  all  common  children,  and  by  which  they 
were  partly  dazed  or  confounded.  They  began  very 
soon  to  feel  themselves  overtopped  by  the  altitude  of 
his  questions,  and  the  superhuman  affinity  of  his  senti- 
ments.    Still  they  could  only  say  the  less  of  his  dem- 


MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS.  15 

onstrations,  that  they  had  connection  back  with  his 
miraculous  story,  of  which  they  could  not  well  permit 
themselves  to  speak.  But  to  hint  the  feeling  growing 
up  in  the  house,  as  he  best  knows  how,  the  evangelist 
represents  that  the  child  "grew  and  waxed  strong  in 
spirit,  filled  with  wisdom,  and  the  grace  of  God  was 
upon  him."  His  being  noticed  in  this  way  before  he 
was  twelve  years  old,  indicates  a  mysterious,  extraor- 
dinary something  growing  visible  in  him. 

Meantime  Joseph  and  Mary,  without  indulging  any 
fond  talk  about  him  as  their  prodigy,  did  what  they 
could  to  give  him  the  rudiments  of  an  education. 
They  at  least  taught  him  to  read.  And  when,  after- 
ward, he  rose  up  in  the  synagogue,  where,  as  we  are  told, 
it  "  was  his  custom  "  to  attend,  and  had  been  doubt- 
less from  his  childhood,  he  went  forward  to  the  sacred 
chest  for  his  manuscript,  and  turned  directly  to  the 
Messianic  promise  of  Isaiah,  as  being  already  well 
versed  in  prophecy,  and  began  to  read,  saying,  "  this 
day  is  this  scripture  fulfilled  in  your  ears."  And  so 
far  had  his  education  been  carried,  when  he  was  but 
twelve  years  old,  that  he  was  already  entered  into  the 
great  questions  of  the  doctors,  and  was  so  profoundly 
taken  by  their  high  discussions  overheard  in  the 
temple,  that  he  must  needs  have  a  part  in  them 
himself,  asking  questions  of  his  own.  All  which  he 
did,  with  so  little  appearance  of  pertness,  and  such 
wonderful  beauty  of  manner,  as  'well  as  in  a  tone  so 
nearly  divine,  that  they  could  only  be  "  astonished  by 
his  understanding  and  answers."     And  there  next  day 


16  MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS. 

he  was  found  by  Joseph  and  Mary,  when  he  should 
have  been  a  whole  day's  journey  on  his  way  back  with 
them  to  Galilee.  They  remonstrate  with  him  only  in 
the  gentlest  and  most  nearly  reverent  manner,  and 
have  nothing  more  to  say,  when  he  answers — "  How 
is  it  that  ye  sought  me  ?  Wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be 
about  my  Father's  business  ?"  Whether  he  had  some- 
how gotten  hold  of  the  fact  that  he  had  another  father 
who  was  not  Joseph,  or  had  simply  grown  out  into  the 
mysterious  feeling  of  some  life-business,  under  God's 
spiritual  Fatherhood,  we  do  not  know.  But  the  dear 
dumb  mother  had  been  learning,  all  these  years,  to 
have  her  conceptions  of  him  outrun  by  his  own  merely 
childish  conceptions  of  himself,  and  what  could  she 
say  ?  He  probably  sometimes  violated  her  religious 
notions,  by  such  liberties  of  sentiment  that  she  was 
disturbed.  And  yet  her  very  disturbance  ran  up  into 
summits  of  reverence  to  his  worth  and  beauty  so  high 
above  mere  childhood,  that  she  dared  not  boast  of  him 
and  could  not  do  better  than  bow  her  spirit  and  be 
still.  "  But  his  mother  kept  all  these  sayings  in  her 
heart  "—not  the  single  saying  just  recited  observe,  but 
all  the  like  sayings  of  his  wonderful  childhood.  Ob- 
serve also  that  she  did  not  keep  them  in  her  memory, 
or  her  understanding,  or  her  diary,  but  in  her  heart — 
that  well  of  silence  in  the  bosom  of  true  motherhood, 
where  all  freshest,  purest  waters  are  kept  fresh  and 
pure.  Infiitered  these  and  stored  by  loving  thought, 
they  are  not  vaporized  and  shallowed  by  much  talk, 
and  seem  to  be  only  the  sweeter  the  deeper  till  they 


MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS.  17 

make.  Her  family  story  she  can  not  carry  into  the 
street,  or  even  speak  of  with  her  friends.  And  things 
are  occurring  with  her  Jesus  every  day,  in  which  the 
stamps  and  signatures  of  his  divinity  are  distinctly 
and  even  visibly  manifested,  but  which  can  not  be  ad- 
vertised without  becoming  tokens  of  weakness  in  the 
mother  and  precocity  in  the  child.  She  sometimes 
wants  to  even  strike  a  song  of  triumph,  like  Miriam 
coming  up  out  of  the  sea,  but  her  loudest,  most  accord- 
ant song  will  be  silence — a  hymn  that  she  keeps  hid 
in  her  heart,  as  she  does  all  the  sayings  and  great  acts 
of  her  wonderful  son. 

Possibly  some  may  be  harshly  enough  tempered,  to 
hint  the  suspicion,  that  her  silence,  after  all,  is  but  the 
natural  token  of  her  impotence  and  want  of  character. 
She  keeps  still,  at  all  points  in  the  story,  it  may  be 
thought,  because  she  has  nothing  to  say,  and  is  in  fact 
a  person  too  unpositive  and  too  drearily  thin-minded 
to  be  affirmatively  capable  of  any  thing.  If  so  it  is 
most  remarkable  that  in  her  beautiful  one  hymn,  "  My 
soul  doth  magnify  the  Lord,"  she  displays  the  full 
timber  of  an  orchestra,  sailing  out  in  exultations  high 
and  strong,  boasting  in  God's  arm  that  has  scattered 
the  proud  and  their  vain  imaginations,  swelling  in 
great  sentiments  that  are  possible  only  to  some  grand 
patriot  father,  some  hero  of  God's  cause  and  kingdom. 
After  such  high  force  displayed,  is  it  by  the  poverty 
of  her  nature  that  she  is  silent  ?  Besides,  we  have 
another  token  of  her  talent  that  is  not  less  convincing. 
There  was  a  very  delicate  question  to  be  settled  be* 


18  MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS 

tween  her  and  Joseph,  before  the  marriage  could  be 
consummated.  And  the  wonder  is  that  she  could  hold 
him  still  to  confidence,  by  any  utmost  power  of  mortal 
address.  A  weak  woman  would  have  quite  talked 
down  her  evidence,  torn  it  even  to  shreds  by  her  pro- 
testations, washed  it  clean  away  by  her  tears.  But 
she  stood  firmly  instead  and  composedly  by  her 
integrity,  and  bore  her  sweet  innocence  in  a  way  of 
self-affirming  truth  so  manifestly  evened  by  the  con- 
sciousness it  gave,  that  neither  she  was  flurried  in  her 
modesty,  nor  he  by  his  misgiving.  It  is  true  that 
Joseph  was  instructed  in  the  matter  by  a  dream.  But 
how  difficult  a  thing,  in  such  a  case,  to  authenticate 
the  dream — as  we  see  that  Mary  was  in  fact  able. 
For  the  angel  of  the  Lord,  coming  to  a  man  by  a 
dream,  is  but  a  feeble  witness,  compared  with  the 
angel  of  innocence  and  truth,  in  a  woman,  who  has 
visibly  felt  no  shadow  upon  her,  but  the  overshadow 
of  the  Highest.  It  may  be  that  some  other  woman 
has  existed  since  the  world  began,  who,  even  innocent, 
could  bear  herself  successfully  through  an  ordeal  like 
this,  but  of  that  we  may  very  well  doubt ! 

Besides  we  must  not  omit  to  notice  the  wise,  deep 
gravity  of  this  woman  in  the  matter  of  her  silence 
itself.  Self-retention  is  the  almost  infallible  token  of 
a  considerately  deep,  strong  character.  Weakness 
runs  never  to  this,  but  always  to  unthinking  clack  and 
rattle.  No  great  life,  like  the  life  of  Jesus,  begins  at 
such  a  motherhood.  Good  sense  and  a  closely  con- 
siderate  silence   are   its   necessary   conditions.      Had 


MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS.  19 

Christ's  mother  been  a  forward  and  loud  woman,  ad- 
vertising always  her  miraculous  child,  reporting  his 
strangely  phenomenal  acts,  repeating  his  speeches  and 
telling  what  great  expectations  she  had  of  him,  it 
really  seems  that  she  might  have  quite  spoiled  his 
Messiahship.  At  any  rate  he  must  have  undertaken 
his  ministry  at  an  immense  and  almost  fatal  disad- 
vantage. Just  as  any  most  nobly  endowed  son,  will 
scarcely  be  great,  or  make  any  but  a  partly  absurd  fig- 
ure in  his  endeavors  to  be,  who  is  thrust  on  greatness 
by  a  noisy  and  ambitiously  prognosticating  mother. 

Accepting  these  terms  of  wise  repression,  her  mother- 
ly great  sense  and  piety  are  kept  busy  by  the  questions 
of  the  child,  requiring  to  be  shown  how  the  Heavenly 
Father  feedeth  men  and  birds  alike  :  what  the  very  lit- 
tle leaven  does  in  going  through  her  whole  three-meas- 
ure baking  of  bread ;  why  her  patching  economy  forbids 
putting  new  cloth  into  old  garments;  how  the  tiny  mus- 
tard-seed grows  large  ;  why  an  old  penny  looks  so  fresh 
that  has  been  found  by  sweeping  out  all  the  litter  of  the 
cabin  ;  whether  the  lordly  house  over  opposite,  under- 
mined and  pitched  headlong,  by  the  terrible  water- 
spout poured  down  the  trough  of  the  hills,  had  not  been 
much  better  founded  on  a  rock?  So  the  glorious  child, 
seizing  common  things  by  their  inmost  sense,  is  get- 
ting packed  full  of  parable  for  his  great  teaching  day. 

He  is  now  a  man  thirty  years  old,  when  the  report 
arrives  of  John's  preaching  down  by  the  Jordan .  Hast- 
ing down  at  once  to  hear  him,  and  approaching  to  be 


20  MARY,   THE   MOTHER   OF  JESUS. 

baptized,  he  is  saluted  by  him  strangely,  on  sight,  in  the 
crowd — "Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away 
the  sin  of  the  world !"  The  consecrating  clove  de- 
scends upon  him,  and  he  is  sealed  for  his  call  by  a  word 
of  sanction  from  above — "  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  in 
whom  I  am  well  pleased."  He  is  verily  come  now  into 
his  Father's  business.  Yes,  he  is  to  be  Messiah !  and  the 
discovery  breaks  upon  his  mind  like  a  storm  upon  the 
sea.  By  which  Spirit-storm  he  is  hurried  off  into  the 
wilderness,  to  consider  and  get  his  bosom  throes 
quieted  and  his  thoughts  in  train  for  the  great  strange 
future  before  him.  For  this  and  nothing  else  was  the 
significance,  the  devil,  we  may  say,  of  what  is  called 
his  temptation.  And  when  this  is  ended,  when  his 
mind  has  gotten  itself  composed  and  adjusted,  he  goes 
back  to  Nazareth.  The  same  that  he  was,  he  still  is, 
yet  how  completely  changed  by  his  call,  and  the  new 
great  life  he  is  now  to  begin  !  He  is  graduated  forever 
as  the  Son  of  Mary,  but  nowise  graduated  as  in  love ; 
for  that  he  will  never  be.  He  finds  her  not  at  home, 
but  away  at  the  little  village  of  Cana,  back  among  the 
hills,  where  she  is  gone  to  attend  the  festivities  of  a 
wedding,  at  the  house  of  a  relative.  Receiving  an  in- 
vitation that  was  left  for  him  he  goes  up  to  the  wed- 
ding himself.  And  there  we  are  let  into  a  new 
chapter,  at  the  very  hinge  of  his  public  life,  and  the 
new  relation  he  is  to  have  to  his  mother.  The  general 
impression  is  that  he  breaks  off  from  her  in  a  sense,  at 
this  earliest  moment,  reprimanding  her  with  a  good 


MARY,    THE   MOTHER   OF   JESUS.  21 

deal  of  seventy,  for  what  he  considers  to  be  her  for- 
wardness  and  officious  meddling. 

The  wine  of  the  feast  gave  out,  as  it  would  seem  ; 
whereupon  the  mother  tells  him,  "  they  have  no 
wine ;"  as  if  expecting  of  him  just  the  miracle  he  is 
going  to  perform.  At  which  Jesus  turns  upon  her 
sharply,  saying,  "  Woman,  what  have  I  to  do  with 
thee  ?  my  hour  is  not  yet  come."  She  pays,  we  notice, 
no  attention  to  his  rebuke,  as  she  certainly  would  if 
she  had  felt  the  severity  we  do  in  it,  but  goes  aside  to 
the  servants  telling  them  to  wait  his  orders  and  do 
whatever  he  bids  them.  She  has  no  idea  what  that 
will  be ;  but  she  evidently  hopes  that  he  will  somehow 
make  up  the  deficiency  and  permit  them  to  go  on  with 
the  distribution. 

Now  the  first  thing  to  be  said  of  this  supposed  rep- 
rimand is  that  the  salutation,  ""Woman,"  sounding 
harsh  and  hard  in  English  and  very  nearly  insolent, 
will  be  quite  delivered  of  its  harshness  by  just  observ- 
ing that  no  such  bluffness  of  meaning  is  implied  in  the 
Greek,  but  that  it  is  a  form  of  address  constantly  used 
in  salutations  altogether  affectionate.  We  have  a  case 
exactly  in  point,  where  Christ  himself  addresses  his 
mother  from  his  cross  in  this  very  salutation — "  Wo- 
man, behold  thy  son."  But  the  words  that  follow — 
"  What  have  I  to  do  with  thee,"  have  just  as  little  of 
reprimand  possibly ;  for  they  are  words  capable  of  all 
varieties  and  shades  of  temperament  in  the  Greek 
idiom,  the  most  harshly  blunt  and  the  most  tenderly 
cordial ;  while  in  English  they  are  nothing  but  a  blow 


22  MARY,    THE   MOTHER   OF   JESUS. 

in  the  face.  The  Greek  words,  literally  given,  are 
simply — "  What  is  there  to  me  and  to  thee  ?"  the 
words  "  to  do  "  being  stuck  in  to  make  up  the  English 
idiom.  And  the  question,  "  What  is  there  to  me  and 
to  thee" — what  concern  that  is  common — may  mean 
either  "  do  not  put  this  matter  in  my  way,"  "  do  not 
push  me  with  untimely  suggestions  ;"  or  it  may  mean, 
harshly  spoken,  "  let  me  alone  ;"  "  I  will  have  no  part 
with  you."  Taking  the  softer  sense  of  the  words,  and 
adding  the  clause  which  follows,  the  Saviour  only 
says,  "  let  this  matter,  woman,  be  for  me,  I  can  not 
begin  now — my  hour  is  not  yet  come."  But  his  hour 
had  come  nevertheless,  even  the  hour  of  doing  his 
first  miracle,  as  we  straightway  see.  And  the  remark- 
able thing  about  the  speech,  in  which  he  is  so  com- 
monly thought  to  be  hard  in  rebuke  upon  his  mother, 
is  that  it  signifies  nothing  of  the  kind,  but  is  only 
what  he  lets  out  in  the  recoil  of  his  feeling,  at  the 
moment,  and  is  passed  away  the  next  moment,  as  a 
cloud  passes  off  the  sun.  "  The  beginning  of  miracles 
to  be  made  even  here — verily  I  can  not  begin  !  How 
can  I  launch  myself  on  this  Messiahship  ?  This  awful 
world-burden,  how  can  I  take  it  up  V  And  yet  he 
took  it  up !  and  the  dreaded  break  of  his  beginning 
is  just  here  made ! 

The  assumption  that  Mary  has  somehow  come  into 
his  secret  plan  about  the  wine,  and  is  letting  it  out 
here  by  a  kind  of  untimely  and  officious  meddling  that 
displeases  him,  is  unpardonably  coarse  and  heedless. 
She  lets   out   nothing,   she    does   not    bolt  upon  the 


MARY,   THE   MOTHER   OF  JESUS.  23 

guests  in  the  announcement  that  "  the  wine  is  out !" 
but  she  simply  says  to  Jesus,  privately  and  apart, 
"  they  have  no  wine."  And  then  his  reply  to  her  is 
also  private  of  course.  Neither  are  they  low  enough 
in  their  manners,  to  violate  a  wedding  scene  by  any 
such  indecent  behavior  as  the  open  altercation  here  as- 
cribed to  them,  by  many  commentators,  would  certainly 
exhibit.  Besides,  if  Mary  had  any  quality  honorable 
above  all  others,  it  was  in  the  closeness  of  her  pru- 
dence, and  the  title  she  got  to  the  confidence  of  her 
son,  by  keeping  all  he  said  and  showed  of  his  advanc- 
ing story  treasured  in  her  heart.  Keeping  him  shel- 
tered in  this  beautiful  confidence,  she  had  a  largely 
open  state  with  him  for  her  dear  reward. 

And  yet  we  can  see  from  the  cast  of  this  dialogue 
and  story  that  something  had  transpired,  giving  it  the 
turn  it  discovers  in  the  matter  of  the  wine.  Perhaps 
we  can  not  tell  what,  but  we  are  at  liberty  to  imagine 
any  thing  most  convenient.  Thus  when  Christ  came 
up  from  the  Jordan,  after  his  probably  two  or  three 
months  absence — after  the  baptism,  after  the  call, 
after  the  temptation — his  mother,  we  will  say,  ob- 
served a  remarkable  change  in  his  appearance.  He 
seemed  like  one  borne  heavily  down,  by  some  un- 
known burden.  When  they  were  apart  by  them- 
selves, she  probably  enough  expostulated  with  him ; 
Avhereupon  he  told  her  exactly  what  was  come  upon 
him  ;  viz.,  to  be  himself  the  Messiah  of  the  prophets! 
Which  again  led  them  to  go  over,  in  their  conversa- 
tion, what  the  prophet  Messiah  is  to  do  and  to  be— all 


24  MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS. 

the  ministries  lie  is  to  perform  for  the  poor,  the  sick, 
the  broken-hearted,  and  the  oppressed,  all  that  he  is  to 
suffer,  as  the  Lamb  of  God  in  the  taking  away  of 
transgression,  according  to  Isaiah's  recital  in  his  fifty- 
third  chapter,  and  according  to  John's  staple  idea, 
just  now  given,  in  his  salutation  at  the  baptism  ;  so  to 
set  up  the  Kingdom  of  God  among  men  and  call  the 
Gentiles  into  it,  as  the  saving  grace  of  God  for  all 
mankind.  Most  natural  it  was,  in  this  recapitulation, 
to  strike  on  that  beautiful  call  of  Messiah,  when  his 
work  is  done,  "  Ho  every  one  that  thirsteth,  come  ye 
to  the  waters,  and  he  that  hath  no  money  come  ye, 
buy  and  eat,  yea  come,  buy  wine  and  milk  without 
money  and  without  price."  Why  this,  said  Mary — 
this  wine — is  festivity,  and  you  must  not  have  your 
heart  oppressed  by  a  mission  so  glad.  This  free-gift 
wine  makes  a  wedding-day  of  your  Messiahship,  and 
what  are  we  here  for,  but  to  see  the  beginning  of  it  ? 
So  they  talked  the  night  away,  it  may  be,  and  why 
shall  we  not  see,  in  the  frequent  recurrence  of  this 
image  of  the  wedding,  in  the  Saviour's  parables  after- 
wards, how  deep  an  impression  the  prophet's  wedding 
call  had  made  upon  him.  And  to-morrow  it  will  come 
out,  in  the  miracle  of  the  wine,  that  Jesus  and  his 
mother  had  been  somehow,  or  in  some  such  way,  ap- 
proaching a  point  of  expectation  here.  We  do  at 
least  discover  how  little  reason  there  may  have  been 
for  the  reprimand  of  Mary  by  her  son,  in  the  matter 
of  the  miracle ;  how  innocent  she  was  in  the  liberty 
she  took,  and  how  little  thought  he  may  have  had  of 


MARY,    THE   MOTHER    OF  JESUS.  25 

any  reprimand  at  all.     There  is  no  reprimand,  save 
under  the  English  idiom. 

Let  us  look  a  moment  now  at  the  home  basis  Mary 
has  provided  for  Jesus,  in  the  prosecution  of  his  min- 
istry. She  has,  besides  him,  four  sons,  and  probably 
three  daughters.  It  has  been  long  debated,  whether 
these  are  Mary's  own  children  or  only  cousins  taken 
by  adoption,  or  possibly  children  of  Joseph  by  a  for- 
mer marriage.  I  will  not  undertake  the  question. 
Let  it  be  enough  that  these  children  ought  to  be 
Mary's,  to  complete  the  incarnation  itself.  For  if  she 
must  needs  live  and  die  in  churchly  virginity,  lest  she 
bring  a  taint  on  her  divine  motherhood  by  maternity 
in  wedlock  afterward,  her  incarnation  office  even  puts 
dishonor  on  both  wedlock  and  maternity  together.  Or 
if  she  must  save  her  son  from  being  own  brother  to 
any  body  by  his  incarnation,  what  genuine  significance 
is  there  in  the  fact  ?  The  debate  is  visibly  instigated 
by  some  ascetic,  over-dainty  scruple,  as  regards  the 
true  honors  of  marriage  and  a  mortal  blood-relation. 

The  ministry  of  Jesus  shortly  brings  him  round  to 
Nazareth,  where  he  is  set  upon,  at  his  preaching,  by 
the  fanatical  rage  of  his  townsmen,  and  compelled  to 
flee  for  his  life.  Mary  can  not  give  him  up  to  the  lot 
of  a  wanderer,  but  hastens  after  him  down  to  Caper- 
naum, where  the  whole  family  are  soon  established  in 
housekeeping  for  his  sake.  Probably  they  had  a  very 
little  property,  else  why  did  Mary  and  Joseph  go  up 
to  Bethlehem  for  the  taxing-  ?  The  four  brothers  too 
3 


26  MARY,   THE   MOTHER   OF  JESUS. 

appear  to  be  now  earning  a  support  for  the  family. 
Still,  having  no  purse  when  out  in  his  ministry,  Christ 
can  only  throw  himself  on  the  public  hospitality.  But 
when  he  comes  back  to  Capernaum,  as  he  is  doing 
every  few  days,  it  is  pleasant  to  know  that  some  of  the 
more  frugal  comforts  are  allowed  him  at  his  mother's 
house,  and  that  there,  at  least,  he  can  find  where  to 
lay  his  head  and  be  a  son  at  home. 

But  we  ask  to  see  the  inside  picture  of  this  home. 
There  was  never  on  earth  a  family  composed  of  mate- 
rial more  diverse  in  the  assortment.  There  are  two 
heads  in  it  circled  with  a  halo,  and  seven  that  are  not ; 
one  is  the  Sacred  Child  or  Man,  the  other  a  Woman 
made  sacred  by  his  miraculous  sonship.  As  regards 
the  seven,  there  is  evidence  that  one  of  them  at  least, 
"  James  the  Lord's  brother,"  had  a  large  fund  of  pow- 
er in  his  gifts.  After  the  martyrdom  of  James  the 
apostle,  lie  won  the  apostleship  by  his  personal  merit 
and  force  of  character,  and  presided  wisely  and  well, 
in  a  most  difficult  time,  over  the  great  metropolitan 
church  at  Jerusalem.  There  was  vigor  enough  doubt- 
less in  the  four  unsainted  sons,  to  maintain  them  at 
cross-purposes  always  with  their  elder  sinless  brother. 
But  Mary  was  happily  prepared  for  the  molding  of 
these  ill-related  elements,  by  the  fact  that  her  mother- 
hood feeling  to  Jesus  was  unlike  that  of  any  mere  nat- 
ural mother  to  her  child.  She  bent  over  her  Holy 
Thing  with  religious  awe  and  not  in  mere  fondness. 
Her  love  worshiped,  as  it  were,  with  the  Magi,  when 
they  came  with  their  gifts.     And  her  silent,  almost 


MARY,  THE  MOTHER  OF  JESUS.       27 

reverent  respect  towards  Jesus,  connected  with  no 
manner  of  partiality,  put  him  always  in  their  respect, 
and  made  him  a  kind  of  benignant  presence  among 
them. 

Of  course  they  had  their  human  thoughts  about 
him,  such  as  were  not  always  just  or  wise.  Perhaps, 
they  were  a  little  tried,  or  put  on  some  hard  speeches, 
by  his  dropping  out  of  work,  and  throwing  over  the 
care  of  the  family  on  them — as  if  he  had  found  some- 
thing better  to  do  about  the  country  than  the  duties 
of  the  eldest  son  at  home  !  And  yet  he  was  their  won- 
derful, strange  brother,  held  in  constant  respect  and, 
to  tell  the  truth,  in  real  admiration.  Thus  we  have  a 
scene  given  us  and  a  dialogue,  that,  if  we  may  judge, 
passes  inside  of  the  house,  and  shows  all  the  brothers 
together.  The  great  feast  of  tabernacles  is  about  com- 
ing off,  at  Jerusalem,  and  the  brothers  going  up — for 
they  are  all  so  far  religious — urge  it  specially  on 
Jesus  to  put  himself  forward  now  in  his  impressive 
demonstrations ;  so  to  let  the  public  men  of  the  nation 
see  what  is  in  him.  For  if  he  is  perchance  the  Great 
King,  Messiah,  what  may  he  not  possibly  do  for  their 
advancement !  Their  argument  is — "  For  no  man  who 
has  merit  keeps  it  secret,  but  seeks  to  be  known  open- 
ly, and  shows  himself  to  the  world."  And  the  evan- 
gelist adds — "  For  neither  did  his  brethren  believe  in 
him."  He  does  not  mean  that  they  are  spiritual  rejec* 
tors,  in  that  sense  unbelievers ;  for  that  is  an  idea  not 
yet  born.  They  are  willing  enough  plainly  to  be- 
lieve,  but  he    is   a  riddle   to   every  body,  the   Mes- 


28  MARY,    THE   MOTHER   OF  JESUS. 

siahship  itself  is  a  riddle,  and  even  John  the  prophet 
reels  incontinently  out  of  his  faith.  In  their  over- 
politic  advice  there  is  no  ill  nature.  They  even  count 
on  going  up  to  the  feast  in  company  with  him, 
hoping  there  to  witness  some  great  success,  that 
will  justify  their  admiration  and  mightily  bring 
on  the  family.  James,  the  future  apostle,  has 
been  practicing  in  this  prudentially  contriving  way 
from  his  childhood  onward,  as  he  will  yet  again 
show  at  the  great  council  at  Jerusalem ;  and  if 
Jesus  had  been  a  debating  character,  policy  and  prin- 
ciple— the  two  worlds  represented  in  the  house — would 
have  been  crepitating  always  in  their  two  kinds  of 
electricity.  But  his  way  no  doubt  has  been  always,  to 
hold  the  dialogue  of  the  house  a  little  way  off,  and 
save  it  thus  from  becoming  a  wrangle.  So  we  see  him 
contriving  here — repelled  and  hurt  as  he  is  by  their 
counsel — to  set  his  clever  brothers  off  on  their  religious 
journey,  without  him.  How  can  he  go  up  with  them, 
thinking  all  the  way,  as  reminded  by  their  presence  he 
must,  of  the  high  figure  he  is  now  expected  to  make  ! 

In  this  glance  at  the  mother's  family  we  see  them 
all  engaged  for  him  and  with  him,  and  if  they  do  not 
believe  in  him,  they  will  stick  fast  by  him,  we  can  see, 
in  dearest  and  most  faithful  love.  As  she  actually  did, 
following  him  to  the  cross  and  staying  unflinchingly 
by  him  in  his  awful  hour ;  and  as  she  and  they  togeth* 
er  also  did,  still  holding  on  upon  his  unknown  future, 
after  his  horrible  death  had  blasted  seemingly  all  fur- 
ther hope  in  it;  gathering  in  with  his  apostles,  to  wait 


MARY,    THE   MOTHER   OF   JESUS.  29 

with  them  the  coming  of  his  unknown  promise — they 
alone  to  be  specially  named  in  the  roll  of  the  little 
apostolic  assembly,  "  Mary  the  mother  of  Jesus  and  his 
brethren  " — conspicuously  honored  in  that  record  as  the 
head  family  thus  of  the  kingdom. 

How  absurd  now  is  the  discovery,  put  forward 
by  critics  who  are  willing  to  let  down  the  person- 
al honors  of  Mary  by  setting  a  stigma  on  her  char- 
acter, that  about  this  time  she  joins  the  church 
party  against  him,  and  heads  a  kind  of  family 
conspiracy  to  get  him  under  constraint.  Christ 
has  been  pressed  all  day  by  multitudes  in  and  about 
Capernaum,  teaching  them  in  successions  of  parable, 
and  healing  their  plagues,  and  has  not  even  found 
time  to  so  much  as  eat  bread.  And  now,  at  last, 
word  comes  to  Mary,  that  he  has  been  cornered  and 
rushed  into  a  court,  where  he  is  completely  hedged  in 
by  the  multitude  or  mob,  raging  madly  against  him. 
The  family  hasten  thither,  greatly  concerned  for  him, 
and  what  is  specially  uncomfortable,  fearing  that  he  is 
finally  getting  quite  beside  himself;  for  his  extraordin- 
ary sentiments  and  strangely  unconventional  utterances, 
exceeding  even  the  eccentricities  of  genius,  have  been 
keeping  them  always  in  this  kind  of  disturbance,  till 
now  they  are  quite  unwontedly  concerned  lest  he  is 
becoming  lunatic;  a  fear  that  is  increased  by  the 
charges  of  foul  possession,  that  are  being  debated  by 
the  multitudes  inside  of  the  house.  Now  the  repre- 
sentation is,  that  his  family  are  come  down  to  the  place 


30  MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS. 

"  to  lay  hold  of  him ;"  but  what  are  we  to  understand 
by  that  ?  They  are  certainly  not  absurd  enough  to  think 
of  seizing  him  by  violence  in  that  crowd,  or  we  ab- 
surd enough  to  impute  any  such  design.  The  natural 
and  proper  conception  is  that  they  are  come  to  bring 
him  off  by  their  friendly  remonstrances,  or  half-com- 
pelling importunities,  requiring  him,  as  it  were,  to  go 
home  with  them  and  rest,  and  take  his  necessary  food. 
They  send  in  word  accordingly,  that  his  mother  and 
family  are  without,  desiring  to  speak  with  him.  Per- 
ceiving at  once  the  over-tender  concern  that  has 
brought  them  hither,  instead  of  going  instantly  forth 
at  their  call,  he  finds  opportunity  in  it  to  say  to  the 
multitude  about  him,  that  he  is  here  among  men,  as 
in  a  large  and  most  dear  family.  And  who  is  my 
mother,  and  who  are  my  brethren,  but  you  all  here 
present,  who  can  do  the  will  of  God  ?  "  for  whosoever 
shall  do  the  will  of  God,  the  same  is  my  brother,  and 
sister,  and  mother  " — such  and  so  great  is  the  dear  blood- 
affinity  with  mankind,  into  which  he  is  born.  The 
whole  significance  and  beauty  of  the  appeal  is,  from 
family  affection  to  the  broader  affection  of  God's  uni- 
versal family.  There  is  nothing  to  be  blamed  in  what 
Mary  is  here  doing,  and  Christ  blames  nothing.  To 
say  that  she  is  here  with  her  family  posse  to  seize  and 
drag  away,  is  a  libel  too  absurd.  Besides,  it  is  a  most 
sorry  detraction  from  all  dignity  of  sentiment  in  the 
lesson  Christ  is  giving  here,  to  imagine  that  he  draws 
it  from  his  displeased  feeling ;  saying  thus — "  I  drop 
these  faithless  relatives,  and  turn  to  you,  hoping  to 


MARY,    THE   MOTHER   OF   JESUS.  31 

at  least  make  brothers  of  you,  since  these  desert  and  be- 
tray me."  The  impeachment  is  too  sharp,  to  allow  any 
look  of  attraction,  in  the  universal-brotherhood  relation 
thus  severely  commended.  A  family  quarrel  stands  in 
winning  connection  with  nothing  so  grandly  fraternal. 

Mary's  behavior  at  the  cross  fitly  ends  her  story. 
On  the  way  out  a  great  company  of  people  follow, 
comprising  many  women  who  go  to  bewail  him,  and 
make  up  the  procession  of  mourners.  Mary,  the 
mother,  was  deep  enough  in  mourning,  but  she  could 
not  join  that  noisy  company,  and  it  does  not  appear 
that  the  other  two  Marys,  Magdalene  and  the  wife  of 
Cleopas,  were  in  it.  At  first,  when  the  cross  is  set  up, 
and  the  suspension  made,  they  are  with  the  mother  at 
the  cross.  But  we  shortly  find  them  in  a  larger  circle 
of  women,  looking  on  from  a  point  farther  off;  having 
floated  away  thither  unconsciously,  perhaps,  in  the 
swing  of  the  crowd.  Mary,  the  mother,  is  thus  left 
alone,  waiting  there  by  the  cross  during  all  those 
dreadful  hours,  till  Jesus  dies.  And  observe  she 
"  stood,"  a  word  of  strong  composure.  Her  knees 
do  not  give  way.  She  does  not  faint,  or  fall  on  her 
face.  She  does  not  toss  her  arms  in  shrieks  and  wild 
hysteric  wailings ;  not  allowing  herself,  when  a  scene 
so  transcendent  is  passing,  to  make  a  scene  of  her  own 
private  griefs.  Doubtless  she  remembers  the  word  of 
Simeon,  that  went  before  upon  her,  when  he  said — 
"  Yea,  a  sword  shall  pierce  through  thy  own  soul 
also,"  but  there  she  stands,  in  the  beloved   disciple's 


32  MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF  JESUS. 

company,  holding  fast  the  decencies  of  sorrow,  as  if 
the  proprieties  of  the  worlds  were  upon  her  !  At 
length,  when  life  is  ebbing  to  the  close,  Jesus  says  to 
her,  in  the  undertone,  probably,  of  his  failing  voice, 
"  Woman,  behold  thy  son  !"  to  him  also,  "  Behold  thy 
mother  !"  Under  this  last  will  and  testament,  she 
goes  out  silent  with  John,  who  takes  her  to  his  home. 
Why  Jesus  committed  her  thus  to  John  and  not  to  the 
four  brothers,  it  is  not  difficult  to  guess  ;  for  John  has 
a  home  as  they  certainly  have  not,  and  are  not  likely 
soon  to  have  again.  For  the  dreadful  ignominy  fall- 
ing on  the  house  in  his  death,  he  sees  must  utterly 
crush  out  and  scatter  the  family.  However,  the  ex- 
pression "  from  that  hour  that  disciple  took  her  to  his 
own  home,"  is  sufficiently  justified,  without  under- 
standing that  she  remained  with  him  till  she  died,  or 
lonjcei1  than  till  her  return  back  to  Galilee.  Besides 
it  is  to  be  noted  too,  that  she  and  the  four  brothers  are 
actually  gathered  family-wise,  in  the  ante-pentecostal 
assembly.  Where,  no  doubt,  they  all  had  their  minds 
opened,  under  Peter's  sermon,  to  the  full  discovery  of 
what  their  Jesus  had  come  into  the  world  to  do.  And 
the  scene  was  a  kind  of  new  birth  to  them  all,  putting 
them  in  courage  again,  and  bringing  them  friends  to 
help  them  by  the  ministration  of  abundant  means,  and 
a  wonderful,  unheard-of  sympathy. 

How  long  after  this  she  lived  we  do  not  know.  But 
we  could  most  easily  believe  that  when  her  mind  was 
opened  at  the  pentecost,  to  the  meaning  of  her  son's 
great  mission,  she  was  at  once  so  astounded  and  exalted 


MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS.  33 

by  the  awful  height  of  her  relationship,  that  her  soul 
took  wing  in  the  uplift  of  her  felt  affinity  with  the  High- 
est, and  was  gone  !  But  we  have  no  such  traditions. 
Possibly  the  suspicion  that  some  were  like  to  give 
her  annoyance  by  the  tender  of  divine  honors, 
put  her  on  ways  of  withdrawment  and  silence.  The 
remarkable  thing  is  that  John  has  nothing  to  say  of 
her,  or  to  report  from  her — except,  probably,  the  story 
of  Cana  ;  for  the  conversation  of  that  story  being  pri- 
vate between  her  and  her  son,  could  have  been  reported 
only  by  her,  and  is  given  by  John  alone  of  all  the 
evangelists.  If  John  had  her  with  him  even  for 
years,  speaking  freely  of  what  she  knew,  how  many 
things  could  she  have  told  him  that  we  so  much  long 
to  hear — the  story  of  the  nativity,  at  first  hand,  from 
her  human  point  of  view,  in  its  due  connection  with 
her  prayers ;  all  the  memorabilia  of  the  wonderful 
childhood  ;  all  about  the  mind-growth  and  develop- 
ment of  the  child,  or  his  advancing  genius  in  the  mat- 
ter of  character.  And  yet  the  apostle,  beginning  his 
gospel  far  back  in  the  solemn  arcana  of  the  Eternal 
Word,  and  passing  directly  over  Mary  to  speak,  four- 
teen verses  after,  of  "  the  Word  made  flesh,"  gives 
not  so  much  as  a  trace  of  mention,  concerning  her 
maternal  place  and  office  in  the  story.  Making  no 
report  of  her  conversations,  he  is  equally  silent  as 
regards  her  death ;  telling  never  when  she  died,  or 
how  she  died,  or  in  what  place  she  was  buried.  And 
it  is  well ;  for  there  was  even  a  much  higher  necessity 
in  her  case,  than  in  that  of  Moses,  that  her  burial- 


34  MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF   JESUS. 

place  should  be  hidden  from  mortal  knowledge. 
Otherwise  it  would  be  the  center  of  a  vaster  idolatry 
than  the  world  has  ever  known.  The  divine  wisdom, 
too,  as  I  think,  somehow  took  her  aside,  with  a  set 
purpose  not  to  let  her  mix  her  human-story  products, 
beautiful  and  graceful  as  they  were,  with  Christ's  im- 
mortal life-word  from  above.  About  all  we  can  say 
of  her,  therefore,  under  her  embargo  of  silence,  is 
that  she  appears  until  she  disappears ;  which  she  does 
— most  wonderful,  most  nearly  divine  of  all  human 
characters — in  the  stillness  of  a  snow-flake  falling  into 
the  sea. 

But  her  disappearing  from  us  does  not  bring  her 
story  to  an  end;  it  only  prepares  our  final  appearing 
to  her,  on  a  higher  plane  of  life,  where  she  will  most 
assuredly  be  the  center  of  a  higher  feeling  than  some 
of  us  may  have  imagined.  Our  pitiful  mistraining 
here  is  assuredly  there  to  be  corrected,  as  an  all  but 
mortal  impropriety.  And  when  that  correction  is 
made,  such  flavors  of  beauty,  and  sweetness,  and  true 
filial  reverence  will  be  shed  abroad,  I  can  easily  be- 
lieve, in  such  loving  and  blessed  diffusion,  as  will  even 
recast  for  us  Protestants  at  least,  the  type  and  tem- 
perament of  the  heavenly  feeling  itself.  The  true 
relativity  of  motherhood  gets  no  place  in  us  here, 
because  we  are  in  a  prejudice  that  extirpates  right 
perception  ;  recoiling  even  from  her  person,  as  if  that 
were  somehow  to  blame  for  the  dismal  idolatries  pros- 
trate before  it,  and  the  mock- worship  gathered  in  it  to. 


MARY,   THE   MOTHER   OF  JESUS.  85 

her  shrine.  Probably  there  was  never  any  created 
being  of  all  the  created  worlds,  put  in  such  honor  as 
this  woman,  chosen  to  be  the  Lord's  mother ;  all  the 
more  truly  our  mother,  that,  from  her  begins  the  new 
born  human  race. — "  Hail,  thou  highly  favored." 
"Blessed  art  thou  among  women  !" 

To  her  it  is  given,  even  to  grow  the  germ-life  of 
the  Divine  Man,  Son  of  the  Father,  in  its  spring. 
And  her  behavior  is  beautiful  enough  to  even  meet  an 
occasion  so  high.  That  grace  of  bearing,  that  sweet, 
devout  modesty,  such  as  became  the  motherhood  of 
everlasting  innocence ;  that  watching  of  her  miracu- 
lous boy,  that  could  so  easily  be  telling  his  wonders 
with  a  weak  mother's  fondness  in  the  street,  but 
which  still  she  was  treasuring  in  her  heart ;  that 
wondrous  propriety  of  silence  at  the  cross,  allowing 
her  no  wail  of  outcry  in  that  hour,  lest  she  might 
be  making  herself  a  part  of  the  scene — O  ye  lilies 
and  other  white  harbingers  of  spring,  culled  so  often 
by  art  to  be  symbols  of  her  unspotted  motherhood, 
what  can  ye  show  of  silent  flowering  in  the  white  of 
purity,  which  she  does  not  much  better  show  herself! 

We  seem  just  now,  in  these  modern  centuries  of 
Reformation,  to  be  assuming  that  Mary  is  gone  by, 
and  the  honors  paid  her  ended ;  and  if  we  choose  to 
let  our  hearts  be  barbarized  in  the  coarse,  unappre- 
ciating  prejudices  that  have  been,  so  far,  our  bitter 
element,  there  certainly  are  finer  molded  ages  to  come. 
Is  it  too  soon  even  now  to  admit  some  feeling  of  ration- 
al shame,  that  we  have  been  weak  enough  to  let  our 


36  MARY,    THE    MOTHER   OF  JESUS. 

eves  be  so  long  plastered  with  this  clay?  Doubtless  it 
must  be  the  first  thing  with  us,  after  we  have  entered 
the  great  world  before  us,  to  get  cleared,  and  assured, 
and  at  home  in  our  relations  to  the  Son  of  Man  him- 
self. After  that  our  next  thing,  as  I  think,  will  be 
to  know  our  mother,  the  mother  of  Jesus ;  for  no 
other  of  the  kingdom,  save  the  King  himself,  has  a 
name  that  signifies  more.  And  I  make  no  question 
that,  when  the  great  hierarchs  and  princes  of  other 
worlds  and  ages,  who  are  challenged  to  pay  their  Ho- 
sannas  in  the  Highest,  throng  in  to  meet  us,  they  will 
ask,  first  of  all,  for  the  woman  by  Avhom,  under  God's 
quickening  overshadow,  Christ,  the  Eternal  Son  of 
God,  obtained  his  life-connection  with  the  race,  and 
his  birth  into  practical  brotherhood  with  it.  As  the 
Sages  of  the  east,  guided  by  the  star,  brought  their 
tribute  to  the  child  at  her  stall,  so  these  ancients  of 
God  will  come  in  with  us,  wanting  above  all  to  know 
the  woman  herself,  at  whose  royal  motherhood  and  by 
it,  Immanuel,  the  King,  broke  into  the  world,  and  set 
up  his  kingdom.  And  higher  still  is  she  raised  by  the 
recognition  of  her  son  himself;  for  as  she  is  yearning 
always  fondly  after  him,  so  will  he  never  disallow'  his 
old-time  filial  feeling  towards  her.  Owning  her  never 
as  in  any  sense  the  Mother  of  God,  he  has  yet  a  moth- 
er-sense in  him,  that  will  be  an  Everlasting  Sentiment, 
and  apart  from  all  idolatrous  honors  paid  her  by  men, 
will  clothe  her  with  such  honors  really  divine,  as  fitly 
crown  the  part  she  bore  in  his  wonderful  story. 


II. 

LOVING  GOD  IS  BUT  LETTING  GOD  LOVE  US. 


"  And  we  have  known  and  believed  the  love  that  God  hath  to 
us."— John  1 :    4,  16. 

By  this  it  is,  in  other  words,  that  we  are  different 
from  what  we  were ;  and  our  thanksgiving  is,  that 
the  love  of  God  has  found  us,  and  begotten  its  like  in 
our  before  unloving  nature.  It  is  not  that  we  have 
volunteered  loving  towards  God,  bringing  on  the 
love  ourselves,  but  that  he  is  beforehand  with  us, 
and  that,  simply  knowing  and  believing  the  love  God 
hath  to  us,  we  so  let  in,  or  give  welcome  to  it,  that  we 
have  it  reproduced  in  ourselves.  Discoursing  in  a 
similar  strain,  in  the  previous  verses  of  the  chapter, 
the  apostle  declares  our  part  in  this  change  more 
negatively,  but  to  the  same  effect.  "  ISTot  that  we 
loved  God,  but  that  he  loved  us."  Also,  "  God  is 
love — fountain,  flood,  and  sea — and  he  that  dvvelleth 
in  love  dwelleth  in  God,  and  God  in  him."  So  that 
being  immersed  in  God's  love,  we  are  saturated  with 
it,  even  as  our  garments  would  be  with  water.  We 
do  not  exactly  take  it  by  absorption,  it  is  true,  we 
give  it  space.  We  let  God  love  us  into  love,  which 
itself  suffices,  and  carries  all  grace  with  it. 

4,  (37) 


38  LOVING   GOD   IS   BUT 

I  propose  then,  for  the  present  occasion,  a  truth 
which  ought  to  be  received  most  hopefully  and  ten- 
derly by  you  all,  and  will  be  received  with  a  specially 
eager  delight,  by  any  one  who  is  struggling  heavily 
with  the  burden  of  his  sins,  and  does  not  find  the  wa}r 
to  cast  them  off.  It  is  this — That  loving  God  is  but 
letting  God  love  us — giving  welcome,  that  is  to  God's  love, 
knowing  and  believing  the  love  God  hath  to  us. 

A  very  different  impression  prevails  with  many — 
sometimes  with  disciples  themselves,  but  more  gen- 
erally with  such  as  have  come  into  no  Christian  ex- 
perience. They  suppose  that  something  very  great, 
and  difficult,  and  almost  impossible,  is  required  to  be 
done.  Perhaps  they  have  in  mind  the  Scripture  call, 
commanding  them  to  strive  as  if  they  had  a  narrow 
gate  to  pass,  to  cut  oft"  right  hands,  to  pluck  out  right 
eyes,  to  sell  all,  to  forsake  houses  and  lands,  and  even 
to  give  up  life  itself.  How  then  can  it  be,  they  will 
ask,  with  such  representations  before  us,  that  we  have 
nothing  more  to  do  for  the  new  love's  sake — that 
which  brings  salvation — than  to  just  let  God  love  us  ? 
But  they  will  have  their  answer  by  only  observing 
how  these  throes,  these  seeming  violences  of  self- 
renunciation  are  all  in  the  way  of  giving  room  and 
welcome  to  God's  love  ;  because  they  are  needed  to 
clear  away  the  barricades  and  obstructions  by  which 
we  are  always  and  habitually,  though,  perhaps,  not 
consciously,  fencing  the  love  of  God  away.  In  one 
view  this  simply  letting  God  love  us  appears  to  be  a 
very  slight  and  facile  matter,  as  indeed  it  should  be, 


LETTING   GOD    LOVE    US.  39 

but  we  have  a  way  of  making  it  fearfully  difficult 
when  it  is  not  in  itself  and  should  not  be.  The  dif- 
ficulty is  artificial,  created  wholly  by  the  recoil  of  our 
own  guiltiness.  It  is  the  lie  we  are  in,  which  can  not 
bear  the  truth.  This  will  appear  more  fully  as  we  go 
on  to  unfold  the  proposition  stated. 

1.  I  make  it  a  point  distinctly  asserted  that  all  men 
living  in  sin  repel  or  draw  back  from  the  love  of 
God,  and  will  not  let  it  come  in  upon  them.  It 
seems  impossible  that  a  truth  so  glorious  for  man,  so 
grandly  luminous,  one  that  raises  him  so  high,  as  that 
God,  the  infinite  Father  loves  him,  loves  the  world 
that  is  made  for  him,  flames  all  round  the  sky  as  a 
circle  of  day  by  his  love — it  seems  impossible,  I  say, 
that  such  and  so  great  a  truth  will  not  be  accepted 
by  a  creature  it  makes  so  great.  Yet  so  it  is.  1  do 
not  mean  by  this  that  we  undertake  to  stop  God's 
love,  or  actually  command  it  away,  but  only  that  we 
ignore  it,  let  it  come  on  our  back  and  not  into  our 
face  or  heart.  We  do  not  say  "  Go  thy  way,"  but 
we  go  our  own  way,  and  that  means  just  the  same 
thing.  When  we  are  required  to  love  God,  we  con- 
sciously enough  reject  the  requirement ;  but  if  it  were 
given  us  as  the  really  true  version  of  it,  that  we  are 
simply  required  to  let  God  love  us,  we  probably 
should  not  be  conscious  of  any  withstanding,  or  un- 
letting hindrance,  and  yet  we  do  withstand  by  a  re- 
sistance so  subtle  that  we  scarcely  know  it,  so  in- 
tractable as  to  be  fatally  sure. 

And  the  solution  of  the  matter  is,  that  we  instinct- 


40  LOVING    GOD    IS   BUT 

ively  recoil  and  can  not  give  the  true  God-welcome 
to  God's  love,  not  being  at  all  in  affinity  with  it.  We 
see  the  s  tme  thing  in  our  relations  to  one  another. 
We  never  really  consent  to  be  loved  by  another  whose 
ways,  manners,  character,  are  any  way  distasteful. 
Every  affection  we  can  not  reciprocate  creates  a 
degree  of  revulsion  in  our  feeling.  If  we  are  averted 
from  another  by  our  own  fault,  to  know  that  he  loves 
us  makes  us  for  the  time  still  more  averse.  And 
thus  it  is,  how  often,  that  God  is  only  too  good  and 
pure  and  high,  to  be  any  but  a  visitor — unwelcome ; 
because  he  wakens  guilt  and  self-disgust,  and  is  felt  as 
a  disturber  even  in  his  love,  more  than  as  a  friend. 
As  to  letting  in  his  love  upon  us,  we  do  not  want  it, 
we  desire  not  the  knowledge  of  his  ways. 

Conceive  the  instance  of  a  son  who  has  fallen  into 
ways  of  vice  and  profligacy.  The  sad  thing  of  his 
condition  is,  that  he  does  not  like  so  much  of  the 
parental  love,  engaged  in  ways  so  many,  and  tender, 
and  deep  in  sacrifice,  to  win  him  back  to  virtue.  All 
such  love  comes  to  him  as  in  qualms,  and  the  very 
words,  and  promises,  and  tears,  that  should  be  elo- 
quent, only  raise  a  stifling  smoke  in  his  feeling,  even 
as  if  they  were  but  fumes  of  sulphur  falling  on  hot 
plates  of  iron.  Doubtless  there  is  much  goodness  in 
the  good  father  and  mother,  but  the  goodness  offends 
him,  and  he  will  not  let  it  be  the  appeal  it  should, 
because  he  is  so  possessed  by  his  vices,  as  to  have  no 
affinity  for  it.  And  yet  he  can,  or  probably  will  have 
such  affinity  when  his  spells  are  broken.     When  the 


LETTING    GOD    LOVE    US.  41 

bitter  woes  of  his  vices,  his  lot  of  shame,  his  want, 
his  all-devouring  appetite,  bring  his  infatuations  to  a 
full  end,  as  they  may,  and  turn  him  back  in  sad  re- 
lentings  on  the  love  he  could  not  accept,  you  shall 
hear  him  bless  himself  in  it,  saying,  "  O  it  is  all  that 
is  left  me,  I  can  not  deserve  it,  I  can  never  be  worthy 
of  it,  or  fitly  return  it.  All  that  I  can  do  is  just  to 
let  it  bathe  me  in  my  shame  and  hopelessness."  His 
recoils  are  ended  now,  because  the  spells  that  were 
on  him  are  all  broken.  Able  now  to  say  "  I  am  no 
more  worthy  to  be  called  thy  son,"  the  tendernesses 
that  before  seemed  over-fond  or  foolish,  melt  a  way 
through  his  memory,  and  the  letting  in  of  the  old, 
once  rejected  love  becomes  a  new,  profoundly  filial 
love  in  his  bosom.  Just  so  it  is  with  all  bad  minds  in 
their  relation  to  the  love  of  God.  They  recoil  and 
close  up  against  it.  Doubtless  it  is  good  in  God  to  be 
tendering  himself  in  such  love,  and  a  certain  sensi- 
bility is  moved  by  it,  still  there  is  a  revulsion  felt, 
and  no  fit  answer  of  returning  love  is  made ;  where, 
as  we  can  see,  the  true  account  of  the  matter  is,  that 
the  love  is  unwelcome,  because  there  is  no  want  of  it, 
or  consentingness  of  mind  towards  it ;  which  is  the 
same  as  to  say,  that  the  man  does  not  let  God  love 
him.  That  love  would  be  photographed  in  him  by 
an  answering  love,  but  he  offers  only  his  back  to  it. 
As  if  the  artist  at  his  camera  were  to  put  in  nothing 
but  a  plate  of  glass,  prepared  by  no  chemical  sus- 
ceptibility, saying  to  the  light,  "  shine  on  if  you  will, 
and  make  what  picture  you  can."  He  really  does  not 
4* 


42  LOVING   GOD   IS  BUT 

let  the  light  make  any  picture  at  all,  but  even  disal- 
lows the  opportunity. 

2.  We  shall  be  farther  advanced  in  our  understand- 
ing of  this  matter,  if  we  observe  how  constantly  the 
scripture  word  looks  to  the  love  of  God,  for  the  in- 
generation  of  love  in  men,  and  so  for  their  salvation. 
The  radical,  every  where  present  idea  is,  that  the 
new  love  wanting  in  them  is  to  be  itself  only  a  reveal- 
ment  of  the  love  of  God  to  them,  or  upon  them. 
Thus  the  new-born  life  is  to  be  "  the  love  of  God, 
shed  abroad  in  the  heart  by  the  Holy  Ghost ;"  where 
we  can  not  understand  by  the  love  of  God,  the  dis- 
ciples' love  to  God — that  would  be  a  salvation  quite 
one  side  of  the  gospel  plan,  which  proposes  the  un- 
bosoming of  God's  love  to  man,  that  it  may  be  shed 
abroad  in  him  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  become 
a  salvation,  as  it  begets,  by  the  Spirit,  an  answering 
love.  So  again  when  it  is  declared  that  "  Love  is 
of  God,  for  every  one  that  loveth  is  born  of  God  ;" 
the  meaning  is  not  that  God's  love  is  of  God,  but 
that  ours  is  of  God — the  love,  that  is,  of  every  one 
that  loveth.  It  is  not  a  love  created  in  us  by  some 
fiat  of  power,  but  a  love  begotten  or  born  in  us. 
So  that  when  it  is  born,  we  are  to  say,  "  our  love 
is  of  God,"  or  more  exactly  still,  "  our  love  is  of  the 
love  of  God,  a  ray  of  the  divine,  kindling  its  warmth 
in  us."  So  again,  yet  more  expressly,  the  new  spirit 
of  love  to  our  fellow  man  is  ascribed  to  the  love  of 
God  in  us — "  If  we  love  one  another,  God  dwelleth 
in  us,  and  his  love  is  perfected  in  us."     To  the  same 


LETTING   GOD    LOVE    US.  43 

effect  again  is  the  word  of  our  apostle — "  We  love  him 
because  he  first  loved  us."  Our  love  is  nothing,  it  is 
God  who  appears  in  his  Son,  declaring — "  For  God 
so  loved  the  world ;"  and  what  we  call  our  love  is 
nothing  but  the  warmth  of  that.  Hence,  too,  the 
incarnation  itself.  It  incarnates  the  love  of  God  to 
melt  a  way  into  our  love.  "  Hereby  perceive  we  the 
love  of  God — "  "  In  this  was  manifested  the  love  of 
God  toward  us."  The  plan  is  to  beget  love  by  love, 
and  nothing  is  left  us  to  do  in  the  matter,  but  simply 
to  allow  the  love,  and  offer  ourselves  to  it.  There  is 
no  conception  any  where,  that  we  are  to  make  a  new 
love  ourselves  ;  we  have  only  to  let  the  love  of  God 
be  upon  us,  and  have  its  immortal  working  in  us. 
That  will  transform,  that  will  new-create,  in  that  we 
shall  live.     Consider  again — 

3.  What  tremendous  powers  of  motion  and  com- 
motion, what  dissolving,  recomposing  forces  come 
upon,  or  into  a  soul,  when  it  suffers  the  love  of  God. 
For  it  is  such  kind  of  love  as  ought  to  create,  and 
must,  a  deep,  all-revolutionizing  ferment,  in  the  moral 
nature.  It  is  no  mere  natural  love,  such  as  the  love 
of  kind,  or  parentage ;  no  friendship  love,  no  love  of 
merit,  no  merely  approving  love ;  but  it  is  a  thing 
how  different,  a  disapproving,  condemning,  sorrowing, 
often  a  suffering,  and  in  all  the  great  Christ-story,  a 
much  abhorring,  morally  offended  love.  And  here  is 
the  reason  why  we  can  not  let  it  be  upon  us,  or  have 
its  dear  great  way  in  us.  It  rakes  up  our  bad  con- 
victions, it  stirs  our  bosom  disorders,  it  chokes  our 


44  LOVING   GOD   IS  BUT 

remorse.  And  O  what  moral  majesty  is  there  in  it, 
overtopping  all  we  know  of  God  beside,  and  casting 
its  not  baleful,  but  awfully  oppressive  and  ominous 
shadow  upon  us.  It  melts  in  pity,  it  is  tender  as 
fresh  rain,  and  yet,  being  so  abhorrent,  so  deep  in 
displeasure  and  moral  offense,  what  will  the  letting  of 
it  in  upon  us,  and  the  knowing  and  believing  what 
it  hath  for  us,  and  the  true  accepting  of  it — what 
will  it  do  but  scald,  and  shake,  and  decompose,  and 
recompose  every  thing  in  us  ?  The  letting  God  love 
us  in  this  manner — out  of  Pilate's  court,  under  the 
crown  of  thorns,  out  of  the  cross — is  not  assuredly  the 
making  up  of  a  merely  smooth  salvation.  Love  though 
it  be,  it  is  the  silent  artillery  of  God,  a  salvation 
that  wins  by  a  dreadful  pungency  ;  raising  up  convic- 
tion of  sin,  to  look  on  him  whom  it  hath  pierced,  mov- 
ing agitations  deep,  stirring  up  all  mires.  So  that 
when  the* love  gets  welcome,  it  has  dissolved  every 
thing,  and  the  new-born  peace  is  the  man  new  com- 
posed in  God's  living  order.  Letting  God  love  us 
with  such  love,  is  adequate  remedy  therefore  and 
complete,  and  is  no  mere  nerveless  quietism,  as  some 
might  hastily  judge.  Or  if  any  doubt  on  this  point 
may  remain,  I   proceed — 

4.  To  ask  what  more  a  sinner  of  mankind,  doing 
the  utmost  possible,  can  be  expected  or  required  to 
do.  Can  he  tear  himself  away  from  sin  by  pulling 
at  his  own  shoulder  ?  Can  he  pluck  himself  out  of 
selfishness,  or  eject  selfishness  out  of  himself,  by  an 
act  of  his  will  I    Can  he  clarify  the  currents  of  his 


LETTING   GOD   LOVE    US.  45 

soul  by  willing  that  his  thoughts  shall  flow  angel- 
ically ?  Can  he,  by  a  mere  self-weeding  culture, 
clean  out  all  the  tares  of  the  mind,  and  make  it  a 
garden  of  beauty,  when  it  has  no  germ  of  God's 
planting  to  spring  up  and  grow  in  it?  Can  he 
starve  out  his  sins  by  fasting,  or  wear  them  out  by  a 
pilgrimage,  or  whip  them  out  by  penances,  or  give 
them  away  in  alms?  No!  no!  none  of  these.  All 
that  he  can  do  to  beget  a  new  spirit  in  his  fallen 
nature,  we  now  come  back  to  say,  is  to  offer  up  him> 
self  to  the  love  of  God,  and  let  God  love  him.  He 
can  be  changed  only  as  the  ice  of  winter  is,  by  letting 
the  great  warm  sun  shine  from  above  into  its  crystal 
body,  not  by  willing  in  itself  to  assume  the  liquid 
state.  Or,  to  use  a  different  comparison,  as  he  can 
see  only  by  allowing  the  daylight  to  stream  into  his 
eyes,  so  he  can  expel  the  internal  disorder  and  dark- 
ness of  his  soul,  only  by  letting  the  light  of  God's 
love  fall  into  it.  Furthermore,  as  he  can  not  see  a 
whit  more  clearly  than  the  light  enables  him,  by 
straining  his  will  into  his  eyes,  so  he  can  do  no  more 
in  the  way  of  clearing  his  bad  mind  than  to  open  it, 
as  perfectly  as  possible,  to  the  love  of  God. 

Need  I  say  again,  to  make  this  point  more  sure, 
that  letting  God  love  us,  as  we  now  speak,  im- 
plies a  great  deal  more  than  a  mere  negative  sur- 
render to  it.  There  is  no  resistance  to  God  that  is 
more  absolute,  or  in  fact  more  effective,  than  that 
which  we  sometimes  offer  in  the  mere  vis  inertice  of 
a  self-indulgent,  negatively  resigned  quietism.      No, 


46  LOVING   GOD   IS   BUT 

to  let  God  love  us  means  a  great  deal  more,  which  I 
need  not  specify  and  could  not  if  I  would.  You 
must  be  transparent  to  God,  that  he  may  shine 
through.  All  unrighteous  practice,  all  ungodly  habit, 
all  self-worship  and  self-pleasing,  all  perverse  lustings 
and  envies  opposite  to  God's  love,  must  be  cast  out, 
else  the  love  can  not  have  room ;  and,  to  comprehend 
every  thing,  your  prayers  must  fan  your  desires, 
waiting  as  porters  at  all  the  gates  and  windows  of 
your  feeling,  to  hold  them  open  to  God's  day. 

And  then,  again,  it  is  vain  to  imagine  that  you 
can  let  God's  love  flow  in,  if  you  can  not  let  it  flow 
out.  We  must  let  the  love  we  are  to  receive  have 
free  course,  flowing  through  us,  in  such  kind  of 
works  and  lovings  as  it  will  naturally  instigate.  It 
must  be  allowed  not  only  to  beget  itself  in  us,  but  to 
make  us  to  others  what  God  is  to  us.  Hence  the 
soul  that  is  actuated  or  impelled  by  any  kind  of 
hatred  or  revenge,  or  that  holds  a  grudge  against 
another  and  can  not,  will  not  forgive  him,  can  not 
really  be  said  to  let  God  love  him  ;  for  God's  love  to 
him  is  a  forgiving  love,  that  bends  in  blessing  and 
even  bleeds  over  all  enemies.  If  you  have  it,  you 
must  have  it  in  its  own  divine  properties,  admitted, 
in  them,  to  reign.     And  now  it  remains  to  say — 

5.  That  when  we  come  to  accurately  understand 
what  is  meant  by  faith,  which  is  the  universally  ac- 
cepted condition  of  salvation,  we  only  give,  in  fact, 
another  version  of  it,  when  we  say  that  the  just  let- 
ting  God   love   us,    amounts   to  precisely   the   same 


LETTING   GOD    LOVE    US.  47 

thing.  For  if  a  man  but  offers  himself  up  trustfully 
and  clear  of  all  hindrance  to  the  love  of  God  in 
Jesus  Christ,  saying,  though  it  be  in  silence,  "be  it 
upon  me;  let  it  come  and  do  its  sweet  will  in  me;  O 
there  is  nothing  I  can  so  much  desire  as  to  be  loved 
by  God,  however  abhorrently  and  disgustfully ; 
this  I  will  trustfully  take  and  tenderly  rest  in,  for 
it  is  all  the  salvation  I  want,'' — plainly  that  is  but 
letting  God  love  him,  and  yet  what  is  it  but  faith  ? 
In  proposing  it  then  as  a  saving  condition,  that  we 
let  God  love  us,  we  do  not  dispense  with  faith.  We 
only  say  "  believe,"  with  a  different  pronunciation. 
Indeed  there  is  no  so  good  way  of  describing  faith, 
as  to  make  it  convertible  at  every  point,  into  the  mere 
suffering  trustfully  of  God's  love  upon  us.  Yes,  O 
guilty  one,  let  God  love  thee ;  yes,  believe  the  love 
God  hath  to  thee,  and  rest  thy  all  eternally  in  it. 
Go  thou  to  Bethlehem,  and  catch  that  hymn  of  wor- 
ship that  rolls  along  mid  air,  and  down  the  face  of 
the  mountains — "  Peace  on  earth,  Good  will  to  men." 
Rise  ere  the  day  breaks,  and  climb  the  solitary  peak, 
where  Jesus  kneels  apart  and  look  upon  the  bur- 
dened love  of  his  prayer.  Overhear  his  words  of 
gentle  sympathy  at  the  grave  of  Mary's  dead  brother, 
and  note  the  gentler  tears  he  drops  at  that  grave,  as 
being  himself  a  divine  brother  mourning  with  her. 
Steal  up  the  hillside,  in  the  deep  silence  of  the  night, 
and  watching  there  under  the  olives  of  the  garden, 
behold  the  heavier  night  of  agony  that  rests  upon  the 
loving    heart     of    Jesus.      Struggle    up    the    street 


48  LOVING    GOD    IS   BUT 

with  him,  as  he  goes  out  hearing  his  cross,  and  there 
behold  the  only  beautiful  unmarred  spirit  of  the 
world,  exhale  itself  in  prayer  and  apology  to  God 
for  its  enemies — then  say,  "  This  is  God — God  so 
loved  the  world ;"  adding  also  something  yet  more 
personal,  dearer  and  closer  to  feeling, — "  who  loved 
me,  and  gave  himself  for  me."  Strange  then  will  it 
be,  if  you  do  not  also  love  him,  and  are  not  quick- 
ened by  him  as  by  some  new  life  loved  into  you ;  even 
as  he  himself  was  raised  from  the  dead  by  the  glory 
of  the  Father.  This  is  your  faith,  neither  more  nor 
less ;  or  we  may  call  it  simply  your  letting  God  love 
you,  in  the  life  and  cross  of  his  son.  Be  it  one  or  the 
other,  it  is  still  the  same.  Enough  that  under  this 
description  or  that,  the  love  has  gotten  its  just  power 
in  you,  and  settled  its  eternal  indwelling  in  your 
hitherto  unloving  nature. 

I  conclude,  then,  after  so  many  illustrations  given, 
that  loving  God  is  no  change  beginning  at  us,  but  a 
coming  rather  of  God's  love  upon  us  ;  where  the 
utmost  we  can  do  is  to  simply  let  him  love  us,  and 
give  him  unobstructed,  everlasting  welcome.  How 
then  is  it — for  this,  in  fact,  is  one  of  the  chief  wonders 
of  our  trial  in  the  matter  of  religion — that  we  en- 
counter in  it  so  many  insurmountables  and  impossi- 
bles % 

Even  they  who  have  sometime  seemed  to  take 
Christ's  yoke  and  find  it  easy,  forget,  how  shortly  after, 
the  sweet  ease  they  enjoyed,  and  only  have  the  yoke 


LETTING   GOD    LOVE    US.  49 

by  itself.  We  find  them  sighing  again  for  some  more 
complete  deliverance,  asking  by  what  throes  and 
agonies,  or  by  what  mighty  works,  they  may  push  away 
their  condemnations,  and  come  into  liberty.  They 
even  wrench  themselves  in  fierce  endeavors  often, 
with  no  result  attained  to,  but  a  final  despairing  of 
deliverance  till  they  are  delivered  of  life  itself.  It  is 
even  as  if  they  were  lifting  in  mires  that  give  way 
and  let  them  deeper  down.  Who  could  imagine, 
looking  in  upon  these  desperations  and  faintings  of 
mortal  courage,  that  after  all  nothing  more  difficult 
is  required  of  them,  than  to  just  be  in  the  love  God 
pours  upon  them,  and  about  them.  This  indeed  is 
difficult,  but  only  because  it  is  so  simple  and  easy, 
that  it  can  not  be  believed.  Know  and  believe  the 
love  God  hath  to  you,  and  you  shall  have  all  that  you 
are  willing  to  receive,  more  than  you  can  ask  or  even 
think.  You  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  let  God's  love 
possess  and  fill  you,  which  it  assuredly  will,  even 
as  it  fills  the  great  and  wide  sea  of  his  infinite 
bosom. 

The  reason  why  your  sanctification,  brethren, 
goes  on  so  slowly,  probably  is,  that  you  believe  so 
•little,  endeavoring  so  much,  it  may  be,  in  yourself. 
If  you  believe  that  God  loves  you  little,  then,  of 
course,  you  will  love  little.  If  you  believe  that  he 
loves  you  much,  then  you  will  love  much,  and  you 
will  be  changed  or  sanctified  just  according  to  the 
measures  of  God's  love  you  receive.  If  you  let  Him 
flow  in  as  a  river,  then  your  peace  will  flow  as  a  river. 
5 


50  LOVING   GOD   IS  BUT 

The  only  hard  thing  yon  have  to  do  is  to  let  him  do 
what  he  will — to  pour  his  love  into  you  according  to 
the  exceeding  abundance  of  his  love. 

At  the  same  time  it  is  here  permitted  us  to  say, 
that  such  as  truly  seek  after  God  have  no  right  to 
find  any  one  of  the  difficulties  they  so  often  complain 
of.  They  are  utterly  bafHed,  somehow,  in  finding  the 
gate,  and  can  not  enter  in ;  and  they  even-  quote  the 
words  of  the  Saviour  when  he  calls  it  "the  strait 
gate,"  not  observing  that  it  is  strait  to  them,  only  be- 
cause they  are  so  narrowed  down  in  themselves,  that 
they  can  not  believe  it  to  be  wide  as  it  is — wide  even 
as  the  love  of  God.  Nothing  after  all  is  required  of 
them  more  difficult,  than  to  just  accept  and  welcome 
the  love  of  God,  as  set  forth  in  his  Son.  There  is  no 
penance  prescribed,  there  are  no  deficiencies  to  be 
made  up,  no  mountains  of  righteousness  to  be  piled 
— nothing  is  required  but  to  give  free  course  to  the 
love  of  God,  and  let  it  have  its  own  renewing,  di- 
vinely sufficient  power. 

Is  there  any  tenderly  doubting  one  present,  groan- 
ing under  the  burden  of  his  sins  and  the  bondage  of 
his  evil  life — what  has  he  to  do  for  deliverance  ? 
What  but  to  simply  know  and  believe  the  love  God 
hath  to  him  \  This  do,  and  he  is  free.  O  thou  sor- 
rowing, dejected,  fainting  bondman  of  sin,  believe, 
believe,  and  thy  chains  are  broken,  thy  burdens  gone 
forever.  The  moment  thou  canst  let  God  love  thee, 
a  new  answering  love  kindles  in  thee,  shed  abroad 
there  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 


LETTING   GOD    LOVE    US.  51 

And  it  is,  accordingly,  a  very  strange  part  of  my 
duty  here,  to  warn  you,  that  a  great  many,  who 
begin  to  seek  after  God,  defeat  and  fatally  obstruct 
their  endeavor,  by  overdoing,  unable  to  simply  be- 
lieve and  let  God's  love  be  upon  them  ;  because  that 
certainly  can  not  be  enough.  Ought  they  not  to  be« 
much  afflicted,  and  suffer  long  and  heavily  under 
their  convictions?  Must  they  not  put  themselves 
forth  in  immense  self-endeavor  ?— must  they  not 
break  in  or  out,  by  huge  throes  of  will  ? — must  they 
not  repent  hard  and  doubtfully,  and  take  up  against 
their  repentances  a  long  time,  so  as  to  be  fitly  com- 
mended to  God  by  their  thoroughness  ?  Passing  thus 
into  their  own  will,  to  assume  the  charge  and  do  the 
work  of  their  own  regeneration,  they  take  themselves 
quite  off  and  away  from  the  revelation  of  God's  love, 
as  the  Spirit  waits  and  works  to  reveal  it,  and  so 
they  are  defeated  by  their  excess  of  doing.  Thou- 
sands are  beaten  off  from  God  in  just  this  way. 
Overdoing,  if  I  should  not  rather  say  over-under- 
taking, is  even  one  of  the  most  common  hindrances 
to  salvation.  No !  the  most  that  you  can  do  is  to  let 
God  do  everything;  that  is  to  offer  yourself  up  to 
him  in  a  perfectly  open,  unobstructed  state.  Love 
is  of  God,  and  every  one  that  loveth  is  born  of 
God. 

And  yet,  exactly  on  the  side  opposite,  there  are 
some  who  begin  to  seek  after  God,  and  defeat  their 
own  effort  by  a  certain  expectation  of  what  would  be 
overdoing  on  the  part  of  God.     They  expect  the  Holy 


52  LOVING   GOD   IS  BUT 

Spirit  to  put  omnipotence  on  them,  and  do  the 
change  they  need,  by  an  act  of  supreme  efficiency. 
They  forget  that  while  God,  in  the  department  of 
mere  things  can  do  all  that  he  pleases  by  his  creative 
will  and  fiat,  he  still  can  do  nothing  in  that  way  in 
the  matter  of  character.  He  can  pile  the  seas  on  the 
mountains,  and  lift  the  mountains  into  the  stars,  or 
hurl  seas,  mountains,  stars,  all  together  through 
space,  as  he  does  the  light  of  the  morning.  But  no 
such  force-work  can  change  the  mold  of  a  character. 
In  the  last  degree  every  moral  change  must  be 
wrought  in  us,  through  consideration,  feeling,  choice  ; 
that  is  by  the  sense  and  belief  of  what  God  is  in  his 
love.  He  can  do  nothing  over  and  above  what  he 
does  by  his  excellence,  save  as  by  his  Spirit  and  Prov- 
idence he  prepares  us  to  behold  and  be  transformed  by 
his  excellence.  To  expect  more  of  him,  therefore,  is 
fatal.  And  is  not  this  enough  ?  Should  he  over-do, 
in  the  way  just  described,  he  would  only  do  less.  If 
his  love  can  not  reach  you,  then  you  can  not  be 
reached.  And  if  his  love  can  not  save  you,  then  you 
can  not  be  saved  ;  for  salvation  is  character,  and  love 
is  the  power  by  which  only  it  is,  or  ever  can  be, 
wrought.  O  the  perversity,  blindness,  hardness — 
apart  from  all  thought  of  retribution  we  say  it — that 
can  not  be  gained  by  all  that  God  has  done,  or  does, 
or  shows,  or  suffers,  in  his  Son  ! 

There  is  yet  one  thought  standing  off  alone,  as  it 
were,  that  demands  a  right  to  be  itself  the  conclusion 
of  this  subject.      We  are  always  thinking,  or  trying 


LETTING   GOD    LOVE    US.  53 

to  think,  that  we  have  reasons,  or  half  justifications, 
for  not  accepting  God  and  religion.  God  we  say  is 
absolute,  and  we  have  insuperable  difficulties  in  ac- 
cepting any  kind  of  absolutism.  God  again  com- 
mands, and  authority  is  not  pleasant.  He  maintains 
a  Providence  over  the  world,  and  while  we  like  to 
have  the  world  well  taken  care  of,  there  is  a  good  deal 
in  the  method,  which  is  satisfactory  to  nobody.  God 
maintains  a  way  of  rigid  and  exact  truth,  and  truth 
which  admits  no  variation,  tolerates  no  accommoda- 
tion, is  not  agreeable.  He  is  said  to  be  everlastingly 
just,  and  justice  is  only  appalling.  His  character  they 
say,  is  infinitely,  spotlessly  pure,  and  the  thought  of 
such  purity  is  not  altogether  welcome.  He  requires 
repentance  for  all  wrong,  and  we  can  not  humble  our- 
selves to  it  easily.  He  is  patient  and  we  do  not  like  to 
be  endured  by  mere  patience.  He  is  commended  to 
us  as  a  long-suffering  God,  which  is  no  commendation 
to  our  feeling,  for  how  can  we  like  to  be  merely  suf- 
fered by  long-suffering?  So  by  these  many  consid- 
erations, one  or  all,  we  are  averted  from  God.  And 
we  half  convince  ourselves  that  we  are  justified  in 
them,  at  any  rate  they  are  reasons  to  us,  and  we 
indulgently  consent  to  let  them  be.  But  here,  as  now 
we  see,  you  add  another  and  last  reason,  that  God  is 
moving  on  you  by  his  love,  and  you  do  not  like  to  be 
loved  in  the  style  of  the  cross.  You  turn  yourself 
away  from  this,  you  are  offended  or  put  in  revulsion 
by  it,  as  by  all  the  other  so  called  reasons  that  are 
more  severe.  It  may  be  good  enough  for  God  to  love 
5* 


54  LOVING    GOD,    ETC. 

you,  but  you  can  not  let  liim  find  you  inwardly  by  it. 
Ah,  that  in  this  so  perversely  excusing  mind  you  are 
going  in  shortly,  to  make  answer  before  him.  And 
there  bringing  forth  your  reasons — all  the  long  cata- 
logue just  named,  and  especially  the  last — what  face 
will  you  put  upon  it  ?  Verily  I  can  think  of  nothing 
so  dreadful  as  that  this  bad  mind,  going  in  thither, 
is  to  carry  in  with  it  just  what  it  is — able  never 
hitherto  to  heartily  welcome  even  the  love  of  God. 


III. 

FEET  AND  WINGS. 

"  When  they  stood  they  let  down  their  wings." — Ezekiel  1 :   24. 

It  is  the  distinction  of  all  flying  creatures  that  they 
have  a  double  apparatus,  wings  for  the  air,  and  feet 
for  the  ground.  Accordingly  they  draw  their  feet  up 
under  them  when  they  fly,  and  when  they  settle  on 
their  feet  drop  their  wings  at  their  side.  Thus  our 
prophet,  in  the  words  here  cited,  puts  a  touch  of  na- 
ture on  God's  cherubim,  as  if  they,  too,  when  they 
settle  in  their  flight,  must  do  it  of  course  in  a  manner 
correspondent — "  When  they  stood  they  let  down 
their  wings." 

He  intends,  of  course,  no  specially  religious  lesson 
here,  but  the  fact  he  cites  may  be  used,  I  conceive, 
writh  some  advantage,  to  illustrate  a  very  important 
subject  of  Christian  experience,  otherwise  difficult  to 
be  effectively  presented  ;  also  the  related  fact,  that  so 
many  make  up  what  they  call  a  religious  life,  that  has 
no  really  Christian  experience  in  it. 

I.  The  subject  of  Christian  experience,  what  it  is, 
and  how  to  be  maintained. 

This  nether  element  of  ours,  called  Nature  and  the 

(55) 


56  FEET   AND   WINGS. 

world,  is  a  kind  of  base-level  on  which  we  trudge,  and 
drudge  ourselves  in  our  works,  and  take  what  grime 
of  it  we  must,  having  faculties  of  locomotion,  feeding, 
sensation,  natural  sentiment,  and  sense-perception, 
coupled  with  discursive  understanding — by  all  which 
we  act  our  parts  on  foot,  as  it  were,  and  have  our 
opportunity  in  the  uses  given  us.  Meantime,  we 
have  a  higher  range  permitted  us  into  which  it  is  our 
privilege  to  ascend;  with  attributes  of  faith-percep- 
tion, love-appropriation,  spiritual  imagination,  added, 
for  the  sensing  of  God  and  the  taking  of  his  revela- 
tion to  live  in  it;  in  all  which  we  become  aerial  crea- 
tures, so  to  speak,  resting  suspensively  on  things 
above  the  world,  and  ranging  freely  in  them.  And  it 
is  this  glorious  uplifting  that  produces  the  transcend- 
ent mystery  of  experience  in  Christian  conversion. 
For  the  major,  infinitely  nobler  part  of  our  faculty 
is  here  opened  out  for  the  first  time  into  worlds  above 
the  world  ;  even  as  a  worm  bursting  its  chrysalis 
begins  to  fly,  or  as  a  balloon,  when  the  cords  are  cut, 
leaps  with  a  bound  into  the  sky.  O,  what  buoyancies 
of  faculty  now  take  us,  all  struggling  upward  after 
God  !  So  that  now,  becoming  spirit,  and  no  more 
flesh  only,  the  new  inspirations  lift  us  into  quite 
another  range  of  experience. 

And  the  Word  of  Life  represents  this  uplifting  of 
souls  in  a  great  many  different  ways  that  are  yet  all 
concurrent.  "  Conversation  in  Heaven  " — "  Raised 
up  together  to  sit  together  in  heavenly  places  in 
Christ   Jesus " — "  Risen   with   Christ   to   seek    those 


FEET   AND    WINGS.  57 

things  that  are  above " — "  Ye  are  come  unto  the 
Heavenly  Jerusalem  " — "  They  shall  mount  up  on 
wings  as  eagles."  The  conception  is  that  souls  new- 
born "from  above,"  as  Christ  speaks,  are  in  this  man- 
ner lifted  above,  and  go  clear  of  the  foot-levels  of  the 
world  and  the  mere  natural  understanding.  The 
smother  of  flesh  and  sense  is  taken  off,  and  they 
rise. 

They  were  creatures  of  understanding  and  crea- 
tures in  the  higher  capabilities  of  faith ;  bat  living 
in  the  understanding,  in  that  always  looking  down, 
they  saw  the  coarse,  nether  element  only ;  so  that 
when  they  come  to  open  their  windows  on  God  by 
their  trust  in  him — admitting  the  full  revelation  of 
his  truth  and  friendship — they  are  taken  up  off  their 
feet  into  a  higher  range  of  life.  They  sail  abroad  in 
a  kind  of  upper-world  liberty.  Duty  now  is  inclina- 
tion ;  truth  an  infinitely  serene  element ;  perception 
broad  as  Heaven  and  full  as  the  sea  ;  and  all  the  de- 
tentions of  world-worship  and  lust  are  fallen  away. 
They,  as  it  were,  only  see  the  world,  when  they  look 
far  down  where  it  lies. 

All  this  by  faith ;  because  when  we  rest  ourselves, 
our  life  and  life-character,  on  God,  we  prove  him  and 
have  the  sense  of  him  revealed  to  our  immediate 
knowledge.  But  this  faith,  it  must  be  observed,  is 
not,  as  appears  to  be  very  often  understood,  any  be- 
lief in  something  about  God  which  is  not  God ;  no 
belief  in  a  proposition,  or  truth,  or  doctrine,  or  fact, 
even  though  it  be  an  atonement  made,  or  legal  justify 


58  FEET   AND    WINGS. 

cation  provided — these  things  are  things  round  about, 
having,  it  may  be,  a  certain  relationship  and  prepara- 
tive concern,  but  the  faith  is  a  wholly  transactional 
matter  toward  God  himself,  and  no  mere  creditive  as- 
sent or  conviction  regarding  something  notional  or  no- 
tionally  affirmed.  It  is  the  man's  new,  self-commit- 
ting, trusting  act,  by  which  he  puts  himself  out  on 
trust,  and  begins  to  live  suspensively  on  God,  as  every 
created  spirit,  whether  under  sin  or  clear  of  it,  is 
made  to  live.  It  is  a  trusting  of  person  to  person, 
substantive  being  to  substantive  being,  sinner  to  Sav- 
iour ;  in  this  maimer  it  is  in  effect  a  sublime  act  of 
migration  upward  into  the  range  of  spirit,  where  it 
lives  inspirationally,  and  has  all  things  new. 

Accordingly,  just  here  begins  the  great  struggle  of 
Christian  experience  I  am  wishing  to  illustrate.  Can 
the  soul  thus  lifted  stay  above  in  that  serene  element 
into  which  is  is  ascended  ?  Plainly  enough,  it  is  pos- 
sible only  as  we  keep  good  the  faith,  or,  when  it  ebbs, 
renew  it.  It  must  be  faith,  too,  still  in  the  person  of 
God  or  of  Christ ;  not  any  faith  in  something  about 
God  and  secondary  only  to  what  is  personal  in  him. 
It  must  be  such  faith  as  lives  derivatively  from  him, 
and  bathes  itself  in  the  revelation  or  inner  sense  of  his 
friendship.  And  precisely  here — here  and  never  any 
where  else — is  the  difficulty ;  that  the  disciple  has 
gravitations  in  him  still,  that  pull  him  all  the  while 
downward,  and  settle  him  on  his  feet  before  he  knows 
it.  And  then,  as  soon  as  he  begins  to  stand,  his  wings 
are  folded,  of  course.     Even  as  the  flying  creatures 


FEET   AND   WINGS.  59 

fold  their  wings  instinctively  when  they  settle  on  their 
feet,  having,  for  the  time,  no  nse  for  them.  The  mo- 
ment he  begins  to  rest  on  mortal  supports,  and  find 
his  hope  in  mortal  good,  he  ceases  in  the  same  degree 
to  live  by  faith.  And  it  comes  to  pass  so  naturally  or 
insensibly  that  he  forgets  himself.  Let  us  trace  some 
of  the  instances  and  ways  in  which  it  comes  to  pass. 

He  is  a  man  of  enterprise,  and  begins  to  think  of 
independence ;  and  the  independent  state  that  draws 
him  on  becomes,  how  easily,  how  insensibly,  the  non- 
depending  state.  His  successes  are  honest  successes. 
His  economies  are  only  rational  and  right.  But  he 
does  not  hang  on  Providence  as  he  did,  in  a  per- 
petually sweet,  bright  confidence.  His  prayers  lose 
out  their  fervors,  and  his  peace  flows  only  as  a  turbid 
river.  Even  God  is  far  less  dear  and  less  consciously 
present  than  he  was.  How  long  is  there  going  to  be 
faith  enough  left  to  have  the  consciousness  of  his 
presence  at  all? 

Sometimes  the  disciple  drops  out  of  faith  unwit- 
tingly, in  overdoing  the  search  after  evidences  of  it. 
What  should  be  that  evidence  but  the  faith  itself,  even 
as  the  day  bring  its  own  evidence ;  or,  better  still,  as 
we  get  evidence  of  warmth  by  the  immediate  feeling 
of  it,  when  we  can  not  find  the  heat  by  any  hunt  of  in- 
spection or  search  beside.  Suppose  he  finally  gets  the 
evidence  of  his  divine  calling  made  up.  It  is  made 
up  in  his  understanding,  of  course,  and  it  might  as 
well  be  made  up  by  computations  in  arithmetic.  He 
has,  in  fact,  descended  out  of  faith   to  get  evidences 


60  FEET   AND    WINGS. 

that  dispense  with  faith.  He  wants  no  inspirations 
longer,  for  he  has  made  good  his  proofs.  Henceforth 
he  burns,  if  at  all,  without  flame.  He  is  down  upon 
his  feet,  and  has  really  undertaken  to  be  a  foot-pas- 
senger all  through. 

By  a  very  common  mistake,  the  disciple  who  is 
losing  ground,  instead  of  going  back  to  his  faith,  puts 
his  will  into  the  struggle,  and  thinks  to  recover  him- 
self by  his  will.  Fighting  out  his  battle  now  by  self- 
endeavor,  he  makes  it  a  losing  battle,  of  course.  De- 
feated and  discouraged,  he  knows  not  how,  he  an- 
swers, with  a  sigh,  Am  I  not  doing  everything  for 
success  ?  Yes,  every  thing  but  the  only  thing,  viz., 
to  believe  in  God  ;  that  is  forgotten.  And  what  can 
he  do  by  his  mere  will-force  and  resolvedness,  when 
the  heavenly  trust  is  wanting  ?  He  might  as  well 
think  to  leap  out  of  the  Gulf  Stream  by  the  spring  of 
his  feet.  The  harder  throes  he  makes,  the  deeper  he 
sinks,  of  course. 

Another  class  of  disciples,  of  a  naturally  faithful 
habit,  when  their  fervors  abate,  and  their  enjoyment 
of  God  ceases  to  buoy  them  up,  seeing  no  help  for  it, 
subside,  as  it  were  dutifully ,  into  a  mere  routine  prac- 
tice, or  observance  of  times.  They  gravitate  down- 
ward on  regularity ;  consenting  thus  to  a  regulation 
service  on  foot,  since  it  can  no  longer  be  a  service  in 
impulse  and  liberty.  Unblest  and  dry,  they  are  none 
the  less  punctual  and  exact.  They  mean  at  least,  to  be 
faithful ;  and  they  hope  there  may  be  some  good  in  it, 
only  of  a  duller   sort   than   it   should   be.     Perhaps 


FEET   AND   WINGS.  61 

there  may ;  only  how  much  better  if  they  could  be 
sure  of  some  little  faith  in  their  faithfulness ;  which, 
if  they  had  it  but  as  a  grain  of  mustard  seed,  would 
kindle,  at  least,  an  observable  fire.  Had  their  faith 
but  a  one-wing  power,  it  ought,  in  the  napping,  to  lift 
them  visibly  a  few  feet  upward  now  and  then. 

Sometimes  again  it  happens,  that  a  disciple  who  is 
losing  ground,  is  taken  advantage  of  by  the  plea  of 
worldly  conformity,  and  tempted  to  make  his  losing 
more  complete  than  he  knows.  He  thinks  he  can  do 
more  by  a  more  winning  address,  that  more  readily 
propitiates  favor.  So  he  shortens  the  distance  be- 
tween himself  and  the  world,  that  he  may  shorten  the 
distance  between  the  world  and  himself.  He  under- 
takes to  be  more  human,  expecting  to  be  as  much 
more  Christian,  and  becomes,  in  fact,  as  much  less 
Christian  as  he  is  more  human.  I  grant  the  possi- 
bility of  an  over-austere  practice,  that  may  fitly  be 
softened ;  but  this  study  of  conformities  is  a  wonder- 
fully delicate  matter,  which  none  but  a  man  of  inflex- 
ible tenacity  should  ever  dare  to  indulge  ;  nor  even  he, 
save  as  he  is  high  enough  lifted  by  his  faith  in  God  to 
suffer  no  bent  downward,  but  in  social  recognitions, 
or  Christian  pity  and  tears.  Cultivating  the  conform- 
ities is  only  a  plausible  way  of  being  mired  in  them. 
Buying  off  the  world  by  taking  its  manners,  shows, 
fashions,  and  pleasures,  turns  out,  almost  certainly,  to 
be  a  selling  off  to  the  world  and  joining  it.  A  con- 
versation above  is  the  same  thing-  as  living  above, 
and  whoever  undertakes  to  grade,  and  guage  a 
6 


62  FEET   AND   WINGS. 

smoothly  fascinating,  ground-surface  road  will,  of 
course,  be  moving  on  the  ground,  and  not  ascending 
into  faith  at  all. 

To  give  one  illustration  more  :  it  often  happens 
that  a  disciple  thinks  to  steady  and  fortify  his  faith, 
by  a  more  practiced  investigation  and  deeper  studies 
in  matters  of  opinion.  And  it  is  not  to  be  denied 
that  certain  benefits  may  thus  be  gained.  But  the 
difficulty  is  that  when  he  gets  occupied  in  questions 
of  the  understanding,  he  is  likely  to  be  engrossed  by 
them,  and  seek  his  light  in  them,  having  it  no  more 
by  faith  at  all.  Then,  of  course,  he  is  down  upon  the 
levels  of  mere  Nature.  Hence  the  fact  so  often  re- 
marked, that  young  men  going  into  theologic  studies 
are  apt  to  lose  ground  visibly,  to  the  grief  of  many 
friends,  in  their  piety.  They  pass  into  a  sphere  where 
scheme  and  system  are  building,  and  get  stalled  in  the 
industry  of  the  head.  They  forget  that  opinion 
builds  from  below,  and  undertakes  to  be  a  pillar  by 
its  own  firm  standing.  We  think,  it  may  be,  that  we 
touch  bottom,  and  get  sure  footing  in  it ;  but  the  fatal 
thing  is  that  it  is  a  footing  more  literal  than  it  should 
be — a  standing  that  is  on  the  feet.  We  are  going,  as 
we  think,  to  be  kited  or  aerially  floated  no  more,  and 
will  now  have  things  in  the  solid.  But  our  solidity 
turns  out  to  be  a  living  on  the  dry  nuggets  of  articu- 
lated deductions,  and  not  on  the  uplifting  grace  of 
God's  inspirations.  We  settle  thus  out  of  grace  into 
formulations  of  grace,  when,  of  course,  our  wings  are 
down.       Would    that   a   great   many    thousands    of 


FEET   AND    WINGS.  63 

the  more  gifted  souls  could  not  find  the  meaning  of 
this. 

Our  conclusion,  then,  is  that  all  unsteadiness, 
wavering,  collapse, in  Christian  living,  is  caused  some- 
how, in  one  way  or  another — for  the  ways  are  num- 
berless— by  dropping  out  of  the  simple  first  faith,  and 
beginning  to  rest  on  supports  from  below.  The 
moment  any  disciple  touches  ground  with  but  the  tip 
of  his  foot,  and  begins  to  rest  himself  but  in  part  on 
earthly  props,  a  mortal  weakness  takes  him  and  he 
goes  down.  And  there  is  no  need  of  it.  Nothing  is 
more  simple  than  this  law  of  trust.  God,  too,  is  a 
being  faithful  enough  to.  be  trusted  in  at  all  times ; 
and  if  the  disciple  is  faithful  enough  to  abide  in  his 
trust,  he  will  abide  in  God,  and  have  God's  inspira- 
tions in  him,  move  in  God's  liberty.  If  at  any  time 
he  begins  to  subside,  a  calm  and  loving  return  to  his 
trust  will  assuredly  recover  him.  And  he  is  not 
obliged,  living  in  this  key,  to  remit  or  let  go  any  of 
his  studies,  or  toils,  or  engagements.  He  will  only 
carry  himself  the  more  steadily  in  them,  and  with 
less  friction  of  disturbance,  that  his  soul  is  rested  in 
God  by  his  faith.  Sometimes  it  may  be  that  his  faith 
is  shut  in  by  morbid  vapors,  obscurations  from  dis- 
ease ;  but  then  he  has  only  to  believe  the  more  strong- 
ly, waiting  for  his  obscurations  to  be  cleared.  He 
need  not  ever  be  troubled  or  put  in  concern  by  them. 
Even  the  sun  has  obscurations ;  but  above  them  it 
abides  in  the  tranquillities,  and  waits  till  it  has  burned 
a  way  through. 


64  FEET    AND    WINGS. 

II.  It  will  be  seen  by  help  of  the  same  illustration, 
how  it  is  that  a  great  many  persons  who  mean  to  be, 
and  really  think  they  are,  disciples,  miss  ever  going 
above  a  service  on  foot,  by  not  conceiving  at  all  the 
more  ethereal  range  of  experience,  into  which  true 
faith  would  lift  them. 

They  undertake,  for  example,  to  become  reformers 
and  philanthropists,  and  really  believe  that  they  are 
more  superlatively,  genuinely  Christian  in  it,  than 
others  who  have  more  to  say  of  experiences.  They, 
at  least,  mean  business  in  their  religion  ;  caring  little, 
as  they  think  they  ought,  for  the  fervors  that  are  not 
fervors  of  work.  Their  argument,  or  operative  power 
is  commonly  human  opinion,  and  the  combining  and 
rolling  up  of  great  masses  of  opinion  is  the  means  by 
which  they  expect  to  carry  their  projected  reforms. 
In  such  a  mode  of  action,  censure  and  storm  and  fiery 
denunciation  are  naturally  close  at  hand  ;  and  are  not 
much  further  off  when  they  assume  to  be  wielding 
most  especially  the  motive  principles  of  religion. 
They  would  be  very  much  hurt  by  any  reluctance  to 
own  them  as  disciples ;  and  yet  they  do  not  even  con- 
ceive themselves,  many  times,  that  they  are  disciples 
because  of  their  repentances,  or  prayers,  or  the 
sensing  of  God  by  their  faith,  or  by  meekness,  pa- 
tience, or  any  other  grace  that  separates  them  from 
the  world.  Their  element  is  agitation,  seldom  any 
way  of  appeal  that  bears  a  look  of  Christian  peace  or 
repose.  They  have  much  to  say  of  love  ;  but  they 
visibly  hate  more  strongly  than  they  love.     Their  very 


FEET   AND   WINGS.  65 

philanthropy  is  pugnant  and  oppngnant,  and  works 
altogether  by  that  method.  Sometimes  the  reform 
they  are  after  is  a  good  one,  and  is  sorely  wanted  •, 
which  makes  it  the  more  sad  that  they  must  drive  it 
by  mere  human  force,  going  never  above,  to  descend 
upon  it  by  inspirations  there  kindled,  but  keeping 
their  feet  and  warring  with  the  evils  to  be  removed 
hand  to  hand,  on  the  same  level  with  them. 

Sometimes,  again,  there  is  a  way  of  self-culture  at- 
tempted in  the  name  of  religion,  which  is  not  in  any 
proper  sense  religious,  having  no  element  of  faith  in 
it,  and  expecting  no  uplifting  help  from  gracious  in- 
spirations. The  self-culture  ^s  what  a  man  may  do 
upon  himself;  mending  his  defects,  correcting  his  mis- 
takes, chastening  his  faults,  tempering  his  passions, 
putting  himself  into  the  charities  he  has  learned,  from 
Christ  perhaps,  to  admire,  finishing  himself  in  the 
graces  that  have  won  his  approval  or  commanded  his 
respect.  But  the  work  is  a  far  more  hopeless  one 
than  he  imagines,  and  is  almost  sure  to  result  even 
visibly,  in  more  affectations  of  character  than  are 
likely  to  be  much  approved.  Besides,  it  holds  him  to 
a  continual  self-contemplation  which  is  selfish,  and 
keeps  him  all  the  while  filing  and  polishing  on  his 
nature  by  his  will ;  which  is,  in  fact,  the  most  weari- 
some possible,  or  rather  impossible,  kind  of  self-at- 
tention. The  old  faults  conquered,  too,  will  be  coming 
back  on  him  just  when  he  is  conquering  another  set. 
And,  turning  round  to  fight  them  off,  he  will  find  the 
whole  swarm  loose  upon  him  again ;  till,  finally,  get- 
6* 


66  FEET   AND   WINGS. 

ting  worried  and  vexed  and  soured  and  discouraged, 
he  virtually,  though  perhaps  not  consciously,  gives 
over  his  whole  undertaking.  O,  if  he  could  have  gone 
up  to  Christ,  or  to  God,  in  a  true  faith-culture,  and 
let  his  faults  fall  oiF,  as  blasted  flowers  fall  off  the 
trees,  dislodged  by  the  life-principle  in  them,  his  beau- 
tiful thought  of  finishing  a  character  would  have  been 
how  easily  put  forward — without  a  care,  too,  and  in 
the  sweetest  liberty.  No  man  finishes  a  character 
who  does  not  go  above  himself,  and  take  the  culture 
of  God's  own  Spirit ;  by  that  growing  out  a  character 
from  within  which  can  not  be  manipulated  inwardly 
from  without.  If  there  be  any  good  gift  that  cometh 
from  above,  and  can  not  be  made  below,  it  is  char- 
acter. 

Ritualism  is  another  foot-passenger  that  having  no 
sufficient  conception  of  faith,  has,  of  course,  no  better 
conception  of  the  higher  ranges  of  life  prospected  by 
it.  There  is,  in  fact,  a  gravitating  principle  in  us  all, 
that  settles  us  down  upon  the  ritual  way  when  it  can. 
Bound  to  have  a  religion  of  some  kind,  because  we 
have  a  religious  nature,  we  begin,  almost  unwittingly, 
to  have  one  that  is  manipulated  by  our  senses  and 
sensuous  tastes.  We  are  caught  thus  by  the  forms. 
They  are  beautiful,  and  a  fine-looking,  comely  religion 
they  make.  All  the  better  that  they  are  so  nearly 
level  with  our  natural  faculties,  and  just  as  easy  to  be 
used  without  faith  as  with  !  These  reverential  rounds 
and  airs,  these  priestly  ceremonials — what  a  charm  of 
worship  is  in  them  !     How  convenient,  also,  to  have  a 


FEET   AND    WINGS.  67 

religion  that  works  secundum  artem,  and  lets  the  faiths 
and  fervors  take  care  of  themselves  !  Saying  prayers, 
too — how  much  better  and  easier  than  to  pray,  and 
find  how  to  be  heard.  Having  gotten  thus  a  good 
sufficiency  of  religion  below,  and  settled  their  feet 
down  squarely  on  it,  they  really  think  it  a  considera- 
ble improvement.  But  the  sad  thing  is,  that,  instead 
of  raising  the  disciple  up  in  glorious  inspirations,  and 
giving  him  free  wing,  they  humble  him  and  keep  him 
down  ;  so  that,  if  at  any  time  his  native  longings  set 
him  on  being  more  earnest  in  them,  they  become,  in 
fact,  a  superstition. 

Again,  there  is  a  class  of  men  outside  of  the  church, 
or  sometimes  in  it,  who  undertake  to  be  religious  or 
Christian,  and  really  suppose  they  are,  because  of  a 
certain  patronage  they  give  to  the  church  and  the 
word.  What  they  do  not  bring  in  fellowship  they 
propose  to  add  by  counsel  and  management.  Con- 
sciously not  being  in  the  gift  of  spiritual  discernment, 
their  tastes  will  be  the  better,  and  they  will  the  better 
know  what  excesses  are  to  be  restrained,  and  what 
aberrations  avoided.  And,  as  there  are  always  a 
great  many  reasons  why  a  thing  should  not  be  done, 
to  any  single  reason  why  it  should,  they  assume,  as 
they  are  rich  in  the  negatives,  to  be  specially  quali- 
fied critics.  These  critical  powers,  too,  they  propose 
to  contribute  for  the  benefit  of  the  cause ;  while 
others  less  gifted  in  such  matters  may  contribute  their 
prayers  !  Of  course,  these  negatives  belong  not  to 
the  range  of  the  Spirit  and  the  glorious  proprieties  of 


05  FEET  AND   WINGS. 

God  ;  but  to  the  nether  world  of  fashion,  or  opinion, 
or  custom,  and  are  only  rude,  blind  prejudices  at  that. 
The  sermon  has  too  much  faultfinding.  The  deacons 
are  too  ready  to  appear  on  all  occasions.  It  would  be 
much  better  if  the  brethren  would  be  more  silent. 
The  women  are  a  great  deal  more  forward  and  stren- 
uous than  belongs  to  their  sex. 

O,  these  unilluminated  wisdoms,  that  have  only 
feet  and  no  wings  at  all — it  is  as  if  eagles  had  fallen 
out  of  their  element  and  descended  to  be  cranes, 
pleased  that  the  legs  they  stand  upon  have  grown  so 
tall  and  trim,  and  are  able  to  wade  in  such  deep 
water !  But,  alas  !  for  these  infantry  birds  ;  if  they 
could  but  drop  their  uncomely  stilts,  to  soar  as  eagles 
do  and  burn  their  wings  in  the  sun,  they  would  be  as 
much  higher  in  their  range  as  they  pretend  high 
standing  less.  Giving  themselves  over  in  trust  to  the 
Saviour,  instead  of  giving  their  opinions  and  tastes, 
their  patronage  of  his  cause  might  cease,  and  their 
contributions  to  it  have  a  worthier  significance. 

Once  more,  there  is  a  class  who  distrust  all  the  sup- 
posed experiences  in  religion,  doing  it  thoughtfully,  as 
they  suppose,  on  grounds  of  sufficient  reason.  All 
visions  and  revelations  of  the  Lord  they  disrespect. 
It  offends  them  to  hear  any  thing  said  of  spiritual 
discernment,  or  the  discerning  of  spirits,  or  of  special 
gifts,  or  of  divine  monitions,  or  of  answers  to  prayer, 
or  of  calls  to  particular  duties  and  works.  They  like 
to  see  things  keep  the  level  of  Nature  more  nearly, 
and  observe  a  more  prudent   and  judiciously   mod- 


FEET   AND   WINGS.  69 

erated  way.  Inspirations  are  nothing  ;  judgments 
every  thing.  And  they  have  it  as  a  maxim,  that  soar- 
ing experiences  of  every  kind,  all  supernatural  up- 
liftings  and  fervors,  are  only  fantastics  that  had  best 
be  avoided.  Now  Moses  was  a  great  lawgiver,  and 
has  always  been  considered  a  very  solid  man  ;  but  he 
was  most  certainly  in  a  different  way.  Or,  taking  a 
later  and  more  strictly  Christian  example,  the  Apostle 
Paul,  what  shall  we  say  of  that  story  he  tells  the  Cor- 
inthians of  his  very  strange  experience  "  fourteen 
years  ago?"  Perhaps  he  was  a  little  bewildered  by 
it  himself,  and  has  kept  the  thing  under  advisement 
all  this  time,  to  be  sure  of  it.  But  he  is  able  now, 
as  we  see,  to  glory  somewhat.  Was  he  not  caught  up 
to  the  third  heaven  ?  Was  he  not  even  doubtful 
whether  he  was  in  the  body  or  out  of  the  body  ? 
Why,  it  is  a  first  point,  is  it  not,  to  know  that  we  are 
in  the  body.  And  some  of  us  would  be  as  good  as 
nowhere  if  not  in  the  body.  True,  the  great  man 
talks  in  his  overmodesty  here  of  glorying  in  his 
"  infirmities ;"  but  he  dares,  we  see,  to  glory  a 
little,  nevertheless.  And  it  was  his  way  to  be  going 
up  always  into  these  high  regions,  so  that  he  was  not 
sure  at  times  whether  he  had  a  thing  by  revelation  or 
not,  and  even  had  a  considerable  notion  that  angels 
were  getting  high  impressions  out  of  him,  and  God's 
work  in  him  and  by  him.  Yes,  he  was  just  the  kind 
of  high-flying  saint  that  the  wise,  blind  folk  of  this 
world  most  surely  disrespect.  Not  knowing  what 
faith  is,  how  could  they  know  to  what  third  heaven  it 


70  FEET  AND   WINGS. 

may  lift?  So  they  called  him  "mad,"  as  we  know. 
They  could  not  call  him  a  mystic,  or  a  qnietist,  or  a 
pietist,  or  a  Methodist,  or  a  Calvinist,  or  a  Low 
Churchman;  for  these  terms  of  stigma  were  not  yet 
ready.  So  they  called  him  "  mad,"  because  he  did 
not  stay  on  foot  in  their  level  of  sanity.  Was  he  then 
a  flighty  person  ?  Does  not  the  world  even  bow  down 
to  him,  nevertheless,  as  the  grand,  intellectual,  theo- 
logic  chief  of  Christianity  ?  And  was  there  ever,  in 
fact,  a  soul  more  massive  and  sublimely  steady  in  its 
equilibrium  than  his? 

What,  now,  having  all  these  expositions  before  us, 
is  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter?  What  but 
this,  that  true  religion,  according  to  the  Christian  idea, 
makes  an  immensely  wide  chasm  by  the  faith  at 
which  it  begins,  or  in  which  it  is  born  ?  It  is  not  any 
mere  playing  out  of  Nature  on  its  own  level ;  but  it 
is  the  lifting  up  of  the  man  above  himself  in  a  trans- 
formation that  makes  him  new  to  himself.  No  more 
flesh,  but  spirit,  ranging  above  the  world  in  all  the 
liberties  of  spirit.  In  so  far  as  he  is  a  Christian, 
he  occupies  another  sphere,  and  becomes  the  citizen 
of  another  kingdom.  This  he  will  believe,  and  will 
not  only  dare  to  be  thus  lifted,  but  will  scarcely  dare 
not  to  be.  For,  whatever  disrespect  he  may  encoun- 
ter, in  what  so  many  will  consider  his  fantastic  way, 
he  will  have  evidences  in  himself  that  ask  no  certifi- 
cation. Besides,  he  will  have  learned,  shortly,  that 
the  only  safe  way  of  living  for  him  is  the  highest,  and 


FEET   AND   WINGS.  71 

that  no  other  is  entirely  safe.  For  in  this  highest 
range  he  will  be  conscious  that  his  disorders  are 
quelled,  his  internal  jars  and  discords  laid,  his  irrup- 
tions and  tumults  brought  under,  and  a  glorious  se- 
renity and  clearness,  pervasive  as  the  day,  established 
in  him.  All  which,  if  he  settles  away  from  his  trust, 
or  sinks  below  his  calling,  gives  way  correspondently 
before  the  refluent  forces  of  night  and  nature  in  him, 
and  leaves  him  sweltering  in  the  old  misrule.  The 
ancients  had  a  fabled  giant  who  could  not  be  subdued, 
because,  whenever  he  fell,  his  mother,  the  earth,  let 
such  power  into  him  that  he  forthwith  sprung  up,  at 
the  moment  of  contact,  and  slew  his  antagonist ;  till, 
finally,  Hercules,  discovering  the  secret,  held  him  up 
in  his  grapple,  not  allowing  him  to  touch  the  ground, 
and  so  crushed  him.  Exactly  contrary  it  is  with  the 
Christian.  The  earth  is  not  his  mother,  he  is  a  child 
of  the  sun ;  and,  if  he  descends  to  settle  on  the 
ground,  his  strength  vanishes. 

If,  then,  we  are  to  make  our  ascent  into  this  higher 
plane  of  true  Christian  experience,  it  will  be  seen  that 
all  the  ties  which  bind  us  down,  or  hold  us  to  our  feet, 
must  be  effectually  cut  by  our  habitual  self-renuncia- 
tions. Not  even  right  hands  and  right  eyes  can  be 
kept  back  from  the  sacrifice.  Selfishness  and  self-in- 
dulgence are  no  more  for  us.  Coming  down  no  more 
upon  the  world,  we  must  lift  up  every  thing  we  do  in 
it,  and  hope  from  it,  into  that  pure  life  of  sacrifice 
and  trust  in  which  we  abide  with  our  Master.  It 
must  be  with  us  here  as  it  was  with  Noah  when  he 


72  FEET   AND   WINGS. 

made  the  ark.  He  did  not  expect  partly  to  wade  and 
partly  to  float ;  but  he  went  in,  he  and  his,  taking  all 
the  freight  of  his  world-stock  with  him,  when  the 
Lord  shut  him  in.  The  waters  now  became  his  ele- 
ment, and  he  had  no  other.  So,  when  we  go  up  into 
faith,  we  need  to  be  shut  in  by  severance  from  every 
natural  trust.  Our  expectation  must  be  rested  on 
God,  not  on  pillars  of  any  kind  below — pillars  are  not 
wanted  under  wings. 


IV. 

THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE. 


"  For  God  who  commanded  the  light  to  shine  out  of  darkness 
hath  shined  in  our  hearts,  to  give  the  light  of  the  knowledge 
of  the   glory  of  God  in  the   face   of  Jesus   Christ." — 2    Cor.  4;   6. 

The  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God — a 
mighty  and  glorious  gospeling  certainly !  and  where 
is  it  shown  or  testified  ?  In  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Faces  are  the  natural  images  or  exponents  of  persons, 
windows  in  bodies  at  which  we  see  the  souls  looking 
out.  Every  face  accurately  represents  the  man  be- 
hind it ;  so  that  when  we  get  once  thoroughly  ac- 
quainted with  him,  we  can  not  imagine  the  possibility 
that  he  should  have  a  face  at  all  different.  I  am  not 
sure,  however,  that  the  apostle  meant  to  make  so  fine 
a  point  of  the  mere  face  taken  simply  as  the  fore- 
front of  the  head.  The  word  he  uses  is  a  larger  word 
than  our  English  word  face,  denoting  the  whole  as- 
pect, or  personal  embodiment,  that  which  reveals  the 
true  presence  and  character-type  of  the  man.  And 
this  revelation  regarding  it  as  made  by  the  Saviour's 
whole  person — he  conceives  to  be  the  fact-form  gos- 
pel, blazoned  in  his  life,  and  brought  forth  into  living 
expression  by  his  personal  demonstrations.  And  he 
7  (73) 


74         THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE. 

even  conceives  that  there  is  a  kind  of  absolute  force  in 
it,  though  he  probably  means  to  say  it  only  in  a  figure ; 
declaring  that  God  hath  sinned  in  our  hearts,  even  as 
when  he  commanded  the  light  to  shine  out  of  darkness 
in  the  creation  of  the  world.  It  is  a  kind  of  personal 
power,  he  would  say,  that  is  next  thing  to  omnipotence. 

What  I  propose  therefore,  now,  is  to  speak  of  The 
Gospel  of  the  Face,  or  more  accurately  and  scripturally 
stated,  TJie  Gospel  in  the  Face  of  Jesus  Christ. 

My  conviction  is  that  we  put  the  gospel  too  gen- 
erally out  of  its  proper  divine  form,  into  our  own 
human  form,  serving  it,  as  it  were,  in  our  own 
color,  as  we  have  shaped  and  colored  it  for  our- 
selves. We  conceive  what  it  ought  to  be  to  an- 
swer the  conditions  we  appoint  for  it,  and  then, 
by  a  huge  milling  process  of  construction — by  much 
theologizing,  propositionizing,  schematizing,  and  ab- 
stractionizing,  we  show  it  builded  together,  for  the 
very  ends  and  uses  we  have  reasoned  for  it.  It  be- 
comes in  this  manner  our  gospel ;  if  not  the  expres- 
sion of  our  face,  the  abstractional  form  and  frame- 
work we  have  gotten  up  to  do  the  work  that  required, 
as  we  think,  to  be  done.  How  far  we  go  in  this  ab- 
stractive, theoretic  way  may  be  seen  from  the  terms 
we  bring  in  to  serve  our  speculative,  scheme-building 
uses.  Thus  in  our  theology  we  have  these  for  the 
staple  of  our  doctrine,  not  one  of  which  is  found  in 
the  Scripture  at  all — justice,  satisfaction,  merit,  sub- 
stitution, compensation,  expiation.  When  I  say  this 
I  am  not  objecting  wholly  to  abstractional  and  theo- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE.         75 

retic  efforts  in  religion.  Some  I  know  are  strong  in 
the  conviction  that  formulations  of  the  Christian 
truth  are  necessary  to  save  us  from  being  floated  away 
into  all  kinds  of  laxity  and  confusion.  Perhaps  it 
may  be  so,  as  regards  the  parts  of  Christianity  more 
easily  reducible  to  propositions  and  terms  of  abstract 
statement.  But  I  seriously  doubt  whether  the  more 
strictly  proper  matter  of  our  gospel  is  capable  of  any 
such  thing.  For  it  lies  in  sentiment  wholly,  in  what 
goes  to  make  impression  by  expression — in  love,  in 
purity,  in  divine  beauty,  in  sorrow,  in  suffering  well 
and  wisely.  Conceive  what  a  person  may  impress, 
and  do,  and  be,  in  the  phases  of  a  tragically  great 
life,  and  how  far  off  are  we  from  so  much  as  im- 
agining the  possibility  of  propositionizing  the  man. 
Besides,  what  is  Christ  in  his  person,  but  God's  own 
formulization  of  himself,  i.  e.  not  the  statement,  but 
the  image  of  himself.  What  less  than  a  very  bold 
irreverence  then  can  it  be  to  substitute  the  revela- 
tion-form or  face  of  God,  by  any  so  prosy  thing  as  a 
formula  in  words.  And  the  more  evidently  is  this 
true, that  all  that  Christ  was  and  did  is  summed  up  in 
character  and  feeling.  Perhaps  we  make  up  an  ac- 
count of  Christ,  or  of  what  he  has  done,  which  is 
like  this — God  is  just  and  must  be ;  therefore  he 
could  not  forgive  sin,  without  first  satisfying  his  jus- 
tice by  some  expiation,  or  making  amends  to  his  gov- 
ernment by  some  exhibition  equivalent  to  the  execu- 
tion of  penalty ;  he  therefore  takes  from  his  Son  and 
his  suffering  cross,  what  was  justly  due  from  us,  and 


76         THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE. 

we  are  released,  or  rather  justified.  Is  it  then  pos- 
sible, I  would  ask,  for  any  human  creature,  to  read 
over  this  mortally  dry  record,  this  mere  pile  of  bricks 
— and  not  miss  something  most  dear,  every  thing  most 
dear,  in  hearing  him  talk,  and  looking  in  his  face,  and 
going  with  him  out  into  Gethsemane  and  up  to  Pi- 
late's hall  of  judgment  ? 

Let  us  see  now  if  there  is  not  a  gospel  of  the  face, 
an  all  transcending  fact-form,  life-form  gospel  made 
out  for  us,  which  it  behooves  us  always  to  live  in,  and 
have  also  living  in  us  ;  for  the  most  living  form  of  the 
doctrine  is  that,  of  course,  which  as  our  human  nature 
works  will  have  the  most  immediate  and  divinest 
power. 

1.  Let  us  look  into  the  New  Testament  and  dis- 
tinguish, if  we  can,  what  is  called  preaching  there. 
And  we  find  our  apostle  testifying, — "  Whom  we 
preach,  *  *  that  we  may  present  every  man  per- 
fect in  Christ  Jesus."  He  does  not  say  alx>ut  whom, 
or  the  just  account  and  formula  of  whom,  but  whom; 
the  fact-form  man,  the  life,  and  life-history,  and  feel- 
ing, and  sorrow,  and  death,  and  resurrection  of  the 
man.  " Whom  we  preach  "  that  is,  cry,  proclaim, 
publish  as  good  tidings,  set  forth  as  a  fact-matter 
news  or  story — the  word  is  not  theologize,  resolve, 
reduce,  but  preach.  The  souls  to  be  gained  are  also 
to  be  presented  "perfect  in  Christ  Jesus  f  that  is,  in 
the  new  possibilities  and  powers  of  grace  embodied 
for  them  in  the  face  and  person,  or  personal  life,  of 
their  incarnate  Redeemer. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE.         77 

Again  the  same  apostle  declares,  more  stringently 
and  by  exclusion,  what  and  what  only  he  could  suffer 
himself  to  preach, — "  For  I  determined  not  to  know 
any  thing  among  you  save  Jesus  Christ,  and  Him 
crucified."  We  often  cite  the  words  as  authority  for 
preaching  nothing  but  a  certain  ruggedly  articulated, 
formulated  doctrine  of  the  cross,  or  justification  by 
the  cross.  This  is  our  meaning,  not  his.  The  very 
thing  he  means  to  say,  with  sharpest  emphasis,  is  that, 
when  preaching  among  them,  he  had  felt  bound  to 
make  Christ  himself  every  thing,  and  his  own  specula- 
tions or  humanly  contrived  opinions,  nothing. 

Great  varieties  of  word  and  symbol  come  up  on  all 
sides  in  the  New  Testament,  centering  in  the  same 
general  impression.  Thus  Christ  is  bread,  calls  him- 
self "  the  bread  that  came  down  from  heaven."  But 
no  preaching  about  bread  ever  fed  any  body.  Noth- 
ing answers  but  a  fit  dispensing  of  the  bread,  that  is 
of  Christ  himself.     "  He  that  eateth  me  shall  live  by 

Wig." 

Again  he  declares  that,  when  he  is  lifted  vp,  he  is  go- 
ing to  become  a  healer  of  souls  in  being  simply  looked 
upon,  as  the  serpent  lifted  up  was  a  healer  in  the  wil- 
derness. He  does  not  imagine  that  some  notional 
view,  or  opinion,  or  doctrine  of  the  being  lifted  up,  is 
going  to  heal,  but  that  he  himself  lifted  up  will  do  it. 
Medicines  cure  by  what  they  are,  not  by  what  is  said 
of  them  or  reasoned  about  them. 

Again,  calling  himself  the  truth, — "  I  am  the 
truth," — he  does  not  think  of  his  gospel  as  a  proposi- 
7* 


78  THE   GOSPEL   OF   THE   FACE. 

tional  matter,  but  as  being  worded  in  his  person,  and 
receivable  only  from  his  person — just  the  point  where 
Christianity  differs  from  all  the  theorizing  doctrines  of 
the  philosophers.  It  is  no  Christian  idea  that  we  are 
going  to  be  converted  and  sanctified  through  the 
truth,  in  the  sense  that  we  are  going  to  manipulate 
and  manage,  convert  and  sanctify  ourselves  by  good 
abstractions  installed  in  our  heads.  Our  Christ  is  to  be 
the  truth  beheld  in  living  expression.  No  matter 
what  notions  we  have  gotten  booked  for  a  gospel,  he 
is  all  the  gospel  there  is  himself. 

He  is  called  again  and  calls  himself  the  life.  How 
the  life  ?  Because,  the  abstractional  believer  will 
commonly  answer,  he  clears  our  liability  to  punish- 
ment which  is  death,  and  prepares  a  salvable  condi- 
tion for  us.  A  salvable  condition,  life  !  Any  con- 
dition, life!  Soil,  sun,  dew — are  these  vegetable  life, 
any  or  all  of  them  ?  No,  the  soul  lives  only  when  life 
itself  comes,  that  is,  when  Christ  has  entered  the  soul 
as  life.  "  And  you  hath  he  quickened  who  were  dead 
in  trespasses  and  sins."  It  is  he  within  that  is  life, 
and  not  any  thing  he  is  conceived  to  have  done,  to  pre- 
pare a  new  condition,  or  work  out  a  governmental  ex- 
igency for  us. 

It  is  very  important,  also,  to  notice  what  directions 
are  given  concerning  the  use  of  the  incarnate  person 
— and  especially  that  all  cpiestions  of  psychological 
analysis  are  put  by.  The  word  is,  "  This  is  my  be- 
loved son,  hear  ye  him.''''  It  does  not  say,  fall  to  work 
upon  the  problem  of  his  person,  resolve  the  psychol- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE.        79 

ogy  of  his  parts,  as  if  be  were  no  miracle,  but  let 
bim  be  the  miracle  be  is  and  bear  ;  bear  ye  him,  the 
one  single  being  him.  Distinguishing  the  parts  of  his 
composition  in  a  manner  that  is  quite  too  common, 
the  part  that  suffers  and  the  part  that  does  not,  the 
part  that  increases  in  knowledge  and  the  part  that 
does  not,  the  part  that  prays,  and  the  part  that  does 
not,  the  part  that  works  in  a  miracle,  and  the  part 
that  does  not,  makes  him  two  persons,  and  not  one,  a 
Son  of  God  who  is  not  Son  of  man,  and  a  Son  of  man 
who  is  not  Son  of  God ;  and  then  what  is  be  to  us 
but  a  kind  of  double  personation,  dodging  all  appre- 
hension? Exactly  contrary  to  this  he  is  to  be  two 
poles  in  unity,  a  solidly  concrete,  impenetrable,  un- 
solvable  person— God's  full  beauty  and  love  in  the 
human  type  or  face,  "  the  Word  made  flesh."  Look 
ye  hither,  mortals,  the  Eternal  is  here,  a  Friend— per- 
fect, sinless,  bringing  good-will,  and  emptying  God's 
bosom  into  yours— hear  ye  him.  God  is  the  mean- 
ins,  man '  is  the  face— so  much  we  know,  for  it  is 
given  ;  more  we  do  not  care  to  know. 

But  there  is  a  common  belief  that  Paul,  who  had 
the  very  best  and  deepest  understanding  of  the  gospel, 
made  up  carefully  and  steadily,  preached  a  theorizing 
gospel,  dealing  with  all  ruggedest  and  deepest  problems 
of  abstraction,  even  as  our  Christian  schools  do  now. 
The  fact  is  very  different.  He  did  present  and  pub- 
lish Christ  in  terms  out  of  which  we  are  accustomed 
to  draw,  by  inference,  many  articles,  but  he  never 
drew  them  himself.     We  have  done  it  so  long  that  his 


80  THE   GOSPEL   OF   THE    FACE. 

words  appear  to  signify,  themselves,  the  very  things 
we  get  by  construction  out  of  them.  But  in  this  we 
-  greatly  mistake,  as  may  be  seen  by  the  one  single  fact, 
universally  conceded  by  the  Christian  scholars  and 
writers  of  dogmatic  history,  that  no  theoretic  or  ab- 
stractive doctrine  of  Christ's  work  was  ever  stated  or 
taught  during  the  first  ten  centuries  of  the  Christian 
Church — none,  of  course,  by  Paul ;  for  in  that  case,  be- 
ing formally  set  forth  in  his  epistles,  it  took  the  church 
ten  whole  centuries  to  find  it !  Far  more  likely  it  is 
that  we  draw  him  into  such  constructions  by  our  own 
inferences.  The  inferences  may  be  just,  but,  since  he 
did  not  make  them  himself,  they  are  no  part  certainly 
of  the  gospel  he  preached.  The  remarkable  thing 
about  his  preaching,  on  the  contrary,  is  that  he  ad- 
heres so  closely  to  the  fact-view  of  the  gospel.  Using 
many  terms  that  we  have  carried  on  to  a  point  of 
meaning  more  theoretic  and  abstractive,  he  stops 
short  himself,  in  the  purely  practical  power  of  the 
story.  Other  men  have  gone  farther  since  his  day, 
and  seen,  perhaps,  just  as  much  less.  His  justification 
is  practical,  based  in  no  speculated  scheme  of  satisfac- 
tion, being  simply  "  the  righteousness  of  God,"  in 
Christ's  most  righteous  life,  "  unto  all  and  upon  all 
them  that  believe " — a  "  declaring  [in-showing]  of 
the  righteousness  of  God,"  to  make  us  righteous  be- 
fore him.  Neither  does  he  quit  the  fact-form  view  of 
the  Gospel,  or  go  at  all  beyond  it  in  the  figures  of 
offering  and  sacrifice,  and  blood,  and  cleansing,  so  pro- 
fusely applied  and  with  so  great  unction,  to  set  forth 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE.         81 

its  meaning.  It  has  taken  long  ages  of  drill  and  ob- 
servance to  prepare  these  figures,  and  he  sees  God's 
evangelic  purpose  working  in  them  from  the  first. 
He  finds  them  made  ready  as  chariots  for  his  Master's 
life  and  passion,  and  putting  them  in  harness,  drives 
them,  burdened  with  atoning  love  and  grace,  directly 
into  men's  hearts.  How  else  but  by  these  images 
from  the  altar  could  he  tell  a  guilt-stricken  world 
what  the  incarnate  Son  of  Man,  obedient  unto  death, 
has  done  for  them.  Meantime  he  is  always  recurring 
to  the  gospel  of  the  face,  the  manifested  and  ex- 
pressed glory,  as  to  the  pole-star  of  his  Christed  life 
and  ministry  ;  testifying  that  "  God  was  in  Christ ;" 
that  "  we  all,  with  open  face,  beholding  as  in  a  glass 
[?'.  e.,  in  Christ]  the  glory  of  the  Lord,  are  changed 
into  the  same  image  from  glory  to  glory  ;"  that  "  God 
hath,  in  these  last  days,  spoken  to  us  by  his  Son,  who 
also  is  the  brightness  of  his  glory,  the  express  image 
of  his  person." 

Consider  now, — 

2.  What  importance  there  may  be  in  some  revela- 
tion, or  presentation  of  God,  which  enters  him  into 
the  world  as  he  can  be  entered  in  no  form  of  abstrac- 
tion. The  very  purpose  of  the  incarnation  is  to  get 
by  or  away  from  abstractions,  and  give  the  world  a 
concrete  personation.  Thus  in  Christ's  living  person, 
we  are  to  have  God,  who  is  above  all  history,  entered 
into  history,  and  by  such  human  ways  of  life  as  his- 
tory takes  note  of,  becoming  incorporate  in  it.  And 
to  make  the  fact  historic,  and  no  mere  theophany,  he 


82         THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE. 

sta}rs  thirty  whole  years  among  us,  descending  to  our 
human  level,  as  being  under  all  but  the  sin  of  it, 
weaving  all  God's  charities  and  healing  mercies  into 
it,  teaching  how  divinely,  as  no  mortal  teacher  could, 
suffering  with  us  and  for  us,  and  strangest  of  all  by 
us,  and  so  unbosoming  all  God's  beauty  as  a  God  who 
can  pity  and  seek  after  his  enemies.  And  he  has, 
withal — expressing  in  it,  we  may  almost  think,  more 
than  by  all  beside — a  face.  AVho  of  us  has  not  sighed 
many  times  for  a  look  upon  that  face,  and  the  light  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  therein  revealed  ! 
O  what  depth  of  meaning,  and  height  of  meaning, 
and  purity  of  meaning,  what  tender  composure,  what 
restful  strength,  what  majesty  of  good,  and  grace  of 
sorrow,  and  close-drawn  human  sympathy  was  there 
in  it — all  saying  "  look  unto  me,"  "  come  unto  me." 
And  such  is  the  concrete,  staple  matter  brought  in  for 
us  in  the  gospel.  It  is  all  person,  what  a  person  is 
and  feels  and  does  and  suffers  in  the  out-door  forms  of 
human  life  and  action.  It  hangs  for  the  matter  of  it, 
not  on  abstract  teachings,  but  on  the  personal  pro- 
nouns, the  /,  the  me,  the  he,  the  him,  of  his  divine 
manifestation. 

He  is  to  be  the  concrete  of  all  government  and  per- 
fection, let  into  the  world  in  such  visible  deific  force 
and  super-earthly  quality,  that,  having  once  gotten 
the  sense  of  it,  and  the  transcendent  miracle  em- 
bodied in  it,  we  are  satisfied — we  know  God ;  the 
light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  hath 
sinned  in  our  hearts. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE.         83 

There  is  also  another  most  cogent  reason  for  this 
concrete  or  incarnate  presentation;  viz.,  to  beget  a 
more  benign,  more  thoroughly  felt  impression  of  the 
just  severities  of  God.  They  must  come  as  out  of 
feeling,  else  they  are  feeble  and  cold,  and  without  evi- 
dence beside.  Terrors  and  reproofs,  let  fall  thumping 
on  the  world  out  of  abstract  deity,  do  not  come  in 
power.  They  sufficiently  impress  only  when  they 
speak  out  of  a  mind  that  feels,  or  is  visibly  bathed  in 
sympathy  and  sorrow.  Who  but  Christ  then  ever 
gave  us  any  vital  impression  of  God's  hatred  to  sin  ? 
Authority  had  been  asserted  before,  condemnations 
pronounced,  judgments  uttered,  but  who  ever  heard 
them,  as  when  spoken  by  the  loving,  suffering  Son  of 
Man  ?  Hell  was  never  so  deep,  justice  never  so 
dreadful,  or  so  close  at  hand,  as  when  they  lowered  in 
his  divine  face.  Woe  to  the  hypocrites !  Woe  to  the 
oppressors !  Woe  to  the  learned  thieves  of  God's 
kingdom  !  Woe  to  all  ungodly  now  !  No  such  ap- 
palling sense  of  God's  justice  was  ever  bolted  into 
human  bosoms  by  the  severities  of  unseen,  abstract 
deity,  as  when  that  justice  spoke  in  the  voice,  or  glit- 
tered in  the  wrath  of  the  Lamb.  Here  is  justice  in 
feeling,  and  this  concrete  man  who  feels,  is  the  judge 
of  the  world.  Many  persons  who  are  much  con- 
cerned lest  Christ  should  not  make  due  compensation 
to  the  justice  of  God  for  the  release  of  sin,  appear  to 
be  concerned  without  reason.  Half  his  power  con- 
sists in  the  fact  that  justice  comes  out  as  in  concrete 
embodiment  with  him. 


84  TIIH   GOSPEL    OF   THE   FACE. 

Advancing   now  to   a  point   still   deeper  we   per- 
ceive— 

3.  That  if  there  is  to  be  any  remedy  for  the  precise 
disability  and  woe  of  sin,  it  must  be  such  as  may,  in 
some  way,  restore  God  to  his  place  in  the  soul.  What 
is  our  misery  in  the  state  under  evil,  but  that  we  are 
separated  from  God's  occupancy  or  indwelling  by  it — 
"  alienated  from  the  life  of  God  ?"  Therefore  no  mere 
body  of  opinional  truths  or  doctrines  meets  our  case — 
nothing  meets  it  but  to  give  us  back,  in  some  way,  the 
personal  inhabitation  we  have  lost.  Our  gospel  has 
no  relativity,  save  when  it  embodies  or  envisages  the 
divine  love  and  friendship  powerfully  enough  to  enter 
them  into  our  life.  Reinspiration  is  our  first  want ; 
for  not  even  the  Holy  Spirit  reinspires  save  as  he 
shows  the  things  of  Christ  objectively  within.  "  I  in 
them,  and  Thou  in  me,  that  they  may  be  made  perfect 
in  one,"  is,  in  fact,  the  very  gospel,  and  the  whole  of 
it.  Finding  us  emptied  of  God,  it  undertakes  to 
bring  us  God,  and  recommunicate  God  ;  not  some  no- 
tional truth  or  truths  about  God,  but  God's  indwelling 
life  itself— "  I  in  them."  God  is  to  look  himself  in 
again  from  the  face  of  Jesus.  Or,  what  is  nowise  dif- 
ferent, Jesus  dying  into  our  dead  sympathies,  is  to 
enter  back  the  Divine,  and  quicken  us  to  life.  Opin- 
ions, formulated  notions,  or  abstractive  articles,  can  do 
nothing  plainly  as  regards  the  rehabilitation  of  God. 
Nothing  is  at  all  apposite  but  incarnation,  or  what  is 
the  same,  a  living  gospel  worded  to  our  feeling,  in  the 
face  of  Jesus  and  the  concrete  matter  of  his  life. 


THE   GOSPEL   OF   THE    FACE.  85 

4.  It  is  a  consideration  having  great  weight,  that  no 
other  kind  of  doctrine  but  that  which  adheres  to  the 
concrete,  matter-of-fact  gospel  makes  a  true,  or  any 
but  a  false,  point  for  faith.  Salvation  we  say  is  by 
faith,  and  what  is  faith  ?  A  great  first  question  at 
which  many  stumble.  Faith  they  assume  to  be  a  be- 
lief in  something  true  propositionally.  They  even  1 
assume  that  we  put  men  in  a  way  to  be  saved,  only 
when  we  give  them  just  the  propositions  they  must 
believe.  Now  the  propositions  may  be  true  or  not — I 
make  no  question  here  about  them — I  only  protest 
that  such  a  notion  of  faith  totally  mistakes  the  nature 
and  meaning  of  faith.  Gospel  faith  has  nothing  to  do 
with  any  propositional  truth  whatever.  There  is  no 
proposition,  or  hundred  propositions,  that  can  not  be 
believed,  and  have  not  been,  times  without  number, 
having  yet  no  gracious  effect  whatever. 

No,  the  faith  that  brings  salvation  is  the  act  of  a 
being  towards  a  being,  sinner  to  Saviour,  man  to 
God.  "  He  that  believeth  in  me,"  says  Christ,  not  he 
that  believeth  some  things,  or  many  things,  about  me. 
It  is  the  act  of  an  undone,  lost  man,  giving  himself 
over  in  trust  to  Jesus  Christ,  person  to  person  ;  a  total 
consenting  to  Christ,  to  be  of  him,  and  with  him,  and 
for  him,  to  let  him  heal  and  renovate,  and  govern,  and 
be  made  unto  him  wisdom,  and  righteousness,  and 
sanctiiication,  and  redemption,  in  one  word,  every 
thing.  The  simple  first  point  of  it  is  Christ,  a  Sav- 
iour, manifested  in  such  love  and  divinity  that,  taken 
for  salvation  as  a  being,  he  can   be   trusted.      And 


86  THE   GOSPEL   OF   THE   FACE. 

when  he  is  thus  trusted,  that  is  faith.  Propositions 
are  needed  of  course,  facts  about  him  are  needed,  to 
prepare  the  conception  of  him,  so  that  he  may  be 
trusted — the  very  gospel  story  is  made  of  such.  These 
too  must  be  believed,  but  the  believing  of  them  is  not 
faith  at  all,  and  never  did  or  can  save  any  body. 
Saving  faith  is  person  trusted  to  person — that  and 
nothing  else. 

5.  It  is  a  fact  to  be  carefully  noted,  that  all  the 
best  saints  and  most  impressive  teachers  of  Christ  are 
those  who  have  found  how  to  present  him  best  in  the 
dramatic  forms  of  his  personal  history.  Such  were 
Chrysostom,  Augustine,  Luther,  Tauler,  "Wesley. 
These  great  souls  could  not  be  shut  up  under  the 
.  opinional  way  of  doctrine,  or  even  under  their  own 
opinions.  Their  gospel  was  not  dry,  and  thin,  and 
small  in  quantity,  as  being  in  man's  quantity,  and 
therefore  soon  exhausted ;  it  was  no  part  of  their  idea 
to  be  always  hammering  in,  or  hammering  on,  some 
formulated  article,  but  they  had  a  wonderful  out- 
spreading of  life  and  volume,  because  they  breathed 
so  freely  the  supernatural  inspirations  of  Christ,  and 
let  their  inspirations  forth  in  such  grand  liberties  of 
utterance.  They  were  men  thoroughly  Christed  by 
their  inspirations  and  deep  beholdings  in  the  gospel 
facts.  They  had  gotten  such  insight  into  the  ways 
and  times  and  occasions  of  their  Master's  life,  that  sub- 
jects enough,  and  truths  always  fresh,  were  springing 
into  form,  in  all  points  of  the  story ;  and  these,  too, 
not  mere  surface  subjects,  but  profound,  cogent,  mass- 


THE   GOSPEL   OF  THE   FACE.  87 

ive,  piercing,  pricking  in  conviction,  melting  ice- 
bound states  away,  battering  down  every  citadel  of 
prejudice,  and  flowing  out  in  senses  of  God  that 
made  a  wonderfully  divine  atmosphere  about  the 
circles  they  lived  in,  and  the  audiences  before  which 
they  appeared. 

Such  now  I  conceive  is  the  true  gospel  of  Christ 
and  our  question  is  answered.  But  the  answer  itself 
will  be  questioned  in  two  or  three  points  which  also 
require  to  be  noticed. 

Thus  it  may  be  questioned,  whether  certain  persons 
of  a  sharply  inquisitive  mold  will  not  do  best,  when 
conducting  their  processes  more  analytically  and  ab- 
stractively, that  being  the  form  in  which  all  subjects 
have  most  reality  to  them,  and  take  the  deepest  hold 
of  their  convictions.  But  if  what  is  simply  beheld  or 
presented  takes  no  hold  of  their  convictions,  if  only 
what  they  reason  or  think,  or  logically  sift,  has  mean- 
ing to  them,  it  may  be  questioned  with  quite  as  good 
reason  whether  they  are  living  in  God's  light  at  all. 
There  certainly  are  many  such,  just  as  there  are  many 
children  wTho  can  never  be  satisfied  when  a  flower  is 
given  them,  till  they  have  picked  it  in  pieces — when 
of  course  it  is  no  flower  at  all.  Fire  is  the  greatest 
analyzer  in  the  world,  and  the  product,  ashes.  Anal- 
ysis requires  dead  subjects,  but  the  gospel  is  not 
dead,  and  ought  not  to  be  killed.  Any  character  an- 
alyzed, Hamlet  for  example,  and  put  in  terms  of  ab- 
straction,  is   therefore   dead.     The    only   Hamlet    is 


88  THE    GOSPEL   OF   THE    FACE. 

Hamlet  himself,  alive  in  his  own  mystery,  and  not  the 
particular  salts  of  tragedy  into  which  he  has  been 
resolved.  So  when  the  disciple,  instead  of  knowing 
Christ  himself,  a  person  abnormal,  in  some  sense  infi- 
nite, more  than  we  can  think,  deeper  in  his  mystery 
than  human  soul  can  fathom,  thinks  of  nothing  but 
analytic  powders  sifted  through  his  mill  of  logical 
opinion,  the  powders  may  be  very  abundant  and  very 
fine,  but  the  Christ  is  nowhere. 

But  there  is  a  duller  kind  of  objection  that  may 
possibly  arise,  asking  what  shall  we  lind  to  feed  us  in 
this  manner  ?  Shall  we  not  soon  have  used  up  all  the 
fact  of  our  story,  and  then  what  shall  we  do  ?  As  if 
nothing  could  be  inexhaustible  but  some  mere  sylla- 
bus or  propositional  wisdom  ;  or  as  if  we  were  likely  to 
find  that  we  have  used  up  the  gospel !  No,  rather 
judge  there  is  a  poverty  of  soul  in  the  objection  itself, 
that  very  nearly  disqualifies  the  man.  Why,  my 
friends,  the  miners  of  Nevada  will  sooner  have  bored 
out  all  the  silver  of  the  globe  and  made  an  empty  honey- 
comb of  it.  Such  words  spoken  by  such  a  character, 
seconded  by  such  miracles,  representing  visibly  two 
worlds,  opening  vistas  into  God's  deep  nature  and 
feeling  and  counsel,  and  declaring  in  self-evidencing 
majesty,  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  world — such  a 
gospel  vaster  than  the  sea,  wrill  not  soon  be  exhausted. 
If  the  objection  were,  that  one's  soul  must  be  op- 
pressed and  stilled  rather  by  the  overwhelmingly 
grand  subjects  it  will  be  raising,  it  might  be  more  dif- 
ficult to  answer. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE.         89 

I  was  thinking,  a  few  days  ago,  of  the  large  blank 
chapter,  so  to  speak,  of  the  Master's  life,  between  his 
dispute  with  the  doctors  in  the  temple  and  his  public 
ministry—"  those  eighteen  silent  years,  would  that  we 
knew  something  of  them."  Whereupon  it  came  up, 
that  Jesus  was  all  this  time,  "  subject  to  his  parents," 
training  his  great  presentiments  in  a  key  of  filial  duty 
both  domestic  and  lowly  ;  that  able  to  dispute  with  doc- 
tors, he  does  not  hasten  to  the  schools  to  be  occupied 
with  books  and  questions,  but  is  meditating  his  "  Fa- 
ther's business  " — O  what  meditation  that ! — in  the 
trade  of  a  carpenter ;  that  his  custom  was  "  to  be 
always  at  the  synagogue  in  the  Sabbath  worship,  feed- 
ing his  great  thoughts  in  what  of  grace  and  fellowship 
he  could  find,  among  the  rustic  elders  of  his  people  ; 
that  he  must  have  been  reading  the  scriptures  largely, 
or  at  least  hearing  them  read,  to  know  exactly  where 
the  scripture  was,  relating  most  to  himself,  as  he 
plainly  did,  when  he  stood  up,  on  his  last  synagogue 
day,  to  read ;  having,  all  the  while,  O  what  emotions 
rolling  through  his  soul  in  the  discovery  of  what  the 
prophets  were  thinking  beforehand,  of  what  is  now 
dawning  in  his  personal  consciousness  ;  till  finally  his 
patience,  in  the  waiting  of  these  eighteen  silent  unhis- 
toric  years,  occupied  with  so  many  thrilling  fore- 
gleams  of  his  future,  lifts  him — rustic  boy  and  man 
that  he  is — to  a  pitch  of  dignity  almost  inconceivable. 
/Vnd  so  I  was  sketching  a  volume,  without  knowing  it, 
and  the  matter  was  coming  faster  than  I  could 
seize  it.  Facts  that  are  divine  will  open  wonder1 
8* 


90  THE   GOSPEL   OF   THE   FACE. 

fully  fast.  Propositions  are  poor  and  fruitless, 
in  comparison.  Thus  it  is  for  example  with  every 
most  silent,  most  scantily  expressed  thing  in  the  life 
of  Jesus  ;  his  forty  clays  in  the  wilderness,  his  "  Go 
and  sin  no  more,"  his  turning  to  the  lepers  afar  off, 
the  box  of  ointment,  the  hem  that  was  touched,  the 
tear  that  stood  on  his  face  at  the  grave  of  Lazarus,  his 
sleep  in  the  boat,  his  look  at  the  penny,  his  look  up  at 
Zaccheus  in  the  tree,  his  look  down  upon  the  city. 
He  can  not  turn  his  eyes,  without  turning  ours  into 
some  wondrous  discovery  of  his  meaning  and  glory. 

It  is  as  if  he  were  the  index  hand  of  the  creation 
and  of  all  God's  works  and  meanings  in  it  beside, 
and  yet  there  is  a  misgiving  felt  in  some  lest  this 
glorious,  mysterious,  ocean-deep  life  of  Jesus  will 
shortly  give  out;  when  one  or  two  dull  formulas,  per- 
haps, drawn  out  in  a  few  short  lines,  which  a  man 
may  learn,  as  an  ancient  poet  said,  "  standing  on  one 
leg,"  are  a  quite  sufficient  gospel  stock,  ready  to  be 
preached  and  kept  in  preaching,  ready  to  be  pivoted 
and  kept  in  seesaw,  year  by  year.  !No,  it  is  sheer  in- 
dolence and  sterility  that  can  be  stocked  in  this  man- 
ner, and  ask  to  be  excused  from  the  real  gospel,  lest 
it  should  not  yield  enough ;  as  to  them  it  certainly  will 
not  to  keep  them  in  supply.  The  secret  of  the  im- 
posture is  evident.  If  the  preacher  wants  a  syllabus, 
and  then  to  call  it  bread,  he  scarcely  knows,  I  think, 
his  Master's  face,  and  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of 
the  glory  of  God  has  scarcely  flickered  in  his  listless 
mind.     O,  it  ought  not,  whether  we  make  much  or 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE.         91 

little  of  formula,  to  be  a  very  irksome  thing  to  study 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  himself;  and  whoever  does  it 
will  have  subjects  rise  upon  him  faster,  and  vaster, 
and  deeper  in  riches,  than  he  can  ever  even  name, 
without  some  painful  sense  of  only  brushing  surfaces 
and  saying  adequately  nothing. 

At  this  point  be  it  also  understood  as  a  fact  that 
must  not  be  disguised,  that  it  requires  a  very  deep  and 
grandly  vitalized  experience  to  know  Christ  well 
enough  to  preach  him.  One  may  preach  a  formula 
and  know  almost  nothing  of  him — nothing  but  what 
is  verbally  stuck  in  his  head,  or  pigeon-holed  in  his 
memory.  But  the  real  Christ  is  what  a  Christ  may 
be  ;  what  he  shall  signify  in  a  man's  heart ;  what  he  is 
to  feeling,  and  faith,  and  guilt,  and  bondage,  and  ever- 
lasting hope,  and  liberty  that  makes  a  sinner  free.  It 
wants  a  Christed  man  to  know  who  Christ  really  is, 
and  show  him  forth  with  a  meaning.  He  must  be  had 
by  inspiration  ;  manifested  within  ;  opening  his  gates 
outward,  and  upward,  and  abroad,  into  all  height,  and 
depth,  and  length,  and  breadth. 

And  yet  no  mere  way  of  study  and  inward  expe- 
rience will  suffice.  Christ  is  no  deep  meditationist, 
no  recluse  working  out  his  problems  and  living  in  his 
frames,  but  a  wonderfully  out-door  character.  He 
never  had  a  study.  He  lives  on  foot,  mingles  with 
men  in  the  market-places,  touching  and  touched  by 
every  thing  human,  chambered  not  seldom  in  his  sleep 
under  the  open  sky.  Common  life  is  the  element  of 
his  sanctities,  and  his  very  intuitions  have  an  out-door 


92         THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE. 

way  ;  hitting  every  human  creature,  low  or  high,  at 
his  exact  point  of  merit.  He  moves  about  among  all 
grades  of  people,  the  humble,  the  weak,  the  guilt- 
stricken,  the  proud,  the  learned,  the  great  ecclesiastics, 
and  high  public  magistrates,  superior  alike  to  all, 
gentle  as  he  should  be,  dreadfully  severe  as  he  ought 
to  be,  doing  always  what  a  perfect  insight,  tempered 
by  divinest  benefaction,  requires.  He  can  not  be  a 
leveler,  will  not  be  a  moral  or  political  reformer, 
steadily  refuses  on  principle  to  be  a  revolutionist,  and 
yet  there  is  no  problem  of  society,  as  we  are  discov- 
ering more  and  more  distinctly,  that  is  not  somehow 
illuminated  by  his  teachings  and  conduct.  No  man 
really  knows  him,  therefore,  who  can  not  take  the 
open  air  of  society  with  him.  If  his  disciple  was 
never  out-doors  in  his  life,  as  many  disciples  never 
were  ;  or  if  he  never  saw  any  thing,  or  felt  any  thing, 
or  had  any  thing  touch  him  when  he  was,  he  can  not 
have  the  right  sort  of  experience,  and  will  rather  con- 
ceive him  as  the  God-recluse,  than  as  the  gloriously 
real  and  true  God  man. 

I  will  not  turn  this  great  subject  wholly  on  the 
faults  of  preaching ;  for  it  is  a  fact  most  remarkable 
that  Christ  has  notwithstanding,  at  this  very  time,  the 
attention,  so  to  speak,  of  the  world  as  never  before? 
He  is  not  only  the  chief  problem  of  theology  and 
theologic  learning,  but  the  literature  of  the  day  recog- 
nizes him,  and  society  has  a  kind  of  hope  in  him,  and 
the  unbelievers,  in  all  grades  and  conditions,  think  of 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE.  93 

him  with  respect  and  a  certain  half-developed  expecta- 
tion. This  dim  feeling  after  him,  is  everywhere. 
The  report  that  was  brought  him  by  his  disciples, 
"  all  men  seek  for  thee,"  was  never,  I  think,  so  widely 
true.  I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  it  is  the  Christ 
of  the  church  articles,  or  the  Christ  of  the  saints,  that 
is  thought  of  so  desiringly  ;  it  is  only  some  wonderful 
first-fair,  it  may  be,  bursting  up  out  of  humanity  and 
kindling  hope  in  man's  possibilities  ;  who  he  is  to  be, 
and  whether  he  is  to  be  any  Saviour  of  sinners  at  all, 
is  the  question  perhaps  to  be  decided.  What  is 
wanted,  therefore,  now,  and  silently  called  for,  is  the 
preaching  of  the  fact-form  Christ, — just  such  a  Christ 
as  the  charities,  and  miracles,  and  fellow  tendernesses, 
and  death,  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  put  in  outline  be-  ^ 
fore  us  :  God  in  Christ  reconciling  the  world  :  he  that 
could  suffer,  the  just  for  the  unjust,  to  bring  us  unto 
God ;  he  that  could  endure  enemies  and  came  down 
from  heaven  to  bear  the  curse  of  their  bad  lot  to  gain 
them ;  he  that  loved  the  poor  and  feared  not  the 
great ;  he  that  flavored  the  world  by  living  in  it ;  he 
that  went  through  society  and  made  his  quickening, 
medicating  power  felt  everywhere ;  he  that  has  gone 
up  to  prepare  mansions  and  to  set  his  judgment  seat 
for  the  world.  O,  if  he  could  now  be  preached,  as  he 
might  be  and  sometime  will,  what  a  cleaving  to  him 
would  there  be.  And  the  supernatural  glory  of  his 
life  and. works,  instead  of  being  an  objection,  would 
only  kindle  the  greater  fire.  Men  want  the  super- 
natural, after  all,  and  even  hunger  for  it,  if  only  they 


94         THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE. 

can  have  it  in  its  own  self-evidence  and  concrete  self- 
assertion. 

One  thing  more  yet  remains  which  must  not  be 
omitted.  The  very  same  reason  that  required  the 
gospel  to  come  in  by  the  face  of  Jesns  Christ,  or  to  be 
impersonated  by  him,  and  get  expression  through  his 
gentle  emotions  and  the  sanctities  of  his  divine  sor- 
row, holds  good  still,  as  before  he  went  up  to  the  Fa- 
ther. We  are  always  imagining  that  we  want  some 
better  qualified  advocacy — high  preaching,  sturdier 
argument  on  points  of  theology,  better  command  of 
logical  resources,  more  science,  more  fine  rhetoric, 
more  I  know  not  what.  No,  the  thing  that  we  most 
want  is  what  we  miss  or  lose  out,  in  toiling  after  these 
expected  vanities,  namely,  a  divine  light  in  souls,  the 
light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  in  such 
power  as  to  light  up  faces.  Come  what  will  of 
preaching,  or  come  not  wdiat  will  not,  the  grand  law 
of  Christian  power  goes  with  faces.  The  gospel  is 
nothing  now,  any  more  than  it  was  at  the  first,  unless 
it  is  reincarnated,  and  kept  incarnate.  It  must  get 
expression  not  through  tongues  and  propositional 
wisdom,  and  the  clatter  of  much  argument,  but 
through  living  persons,  seen  in  all  the  phases  of  the 
better  life  they  live.  The  real  sermons  are  the  great 
pure  feelings,  the  generosities  of  holy  sacrifice,  the 
patience,  the  abiding  with  Christ  in  his  sorrows,  the 
worship  of  humility.  By  these  every  best  preacher 
will  preach  his  best ;  by  these  every  humblest,  most 
downtrodden  believer  wTill  be  the  best  preacher.     Into 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  THE  FACE.        95 

this  field  then,  one  and  all,  God  bids  ns  come,  and  re- 
ceive the  power  from  on  high  which  came  on  the  first 
disciples,  and  which  comes  on  all,  when  the  light  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  shines  in  their 
faces  and  irradiates  their  persons.  More  briefly,  gen- 
nine  good  living  is  the  gospel,  and  that  not  because 
the  man  lives  well  as  for  himself  but  because  he 
Lives — born  into  Life  from  above. 


V. 

THE  COMPLETING  OF  THE  SOUL. 


"  And  ye  are  complete  in  him  which  is  the  head  of  all  princi- 
pality and  power." — Col.  2:    10. 

If  then  we  are  only  to  be  complete  in  Christ,  the 
inference  must  be  that  we  are  incomplete  without 
him.  It  follows  in  this  view,  or  is  rather  a  part  of  it, 
that  a  soul,  after  being  made  or  created,  is  still  to  be 
completed.  It  may  be  a  germ  to  be  developed,  or  a 
blasted  germ  to  be  restored,  or  it  may  be  both.  In 
either  view,  it  is  not  the  full  completed  integer  it  was 
made  to  be.  Here  accordingly  is  the  true  work  of 
Christ  and  his  gospel.  We  may  say,  that  he  is  here 
for  the  salvation,  or,  with  equal  truth,  for  the  comple- 
tion of  the  soul.  And  this  latter  is  now  to  be  my 
subject;  viz.,  The  completing  of  the  soul. 

We  do  not  commonly  speak  in  this  way.  Our  man- 
ner is  to  regard  the  soul  as  God's  highest,  noblest 
work,  and  we  love  to  think  of  it  as  being  even  more 
complete  than  any  thing  else.  But  we  do  not  ob- 
serve, that  it  is  only  the  greater,  or  is  seen  to  be,  in 
the  fact  that  so  much  is  necessary  to  its  completion. 
If  it  were  some  lower  form  of  being,  a  rock,  or  a  sea, 
or  a  sun,  it  could  be  struck  out  by  a  fiat  of  God,  and 
(96) 


THE    COMPLETING   OF   THE   SOUL.  97 

be  complete  at  the  first ;  but  being  a  moral  nature  to 
be  unfolded  by  its  own  action  into  thought  and  char- 
acter and  deific  inspirations,  and  so  into  an  eternal, 
self-affirming  greatness  and  beaut}',  it  must  needs  pass 
through  great  changes  and  lofty  trainings  after  it  is 
made,  and  in  them  be  completed,  as  otherwise,  or  as 
being  merely  created,  it  was  not  and  could  not  be. 

What  then,  following  in  this  train,  do  we  mean  by 
the  completing  of  the  soul  ?  how  does  it  appear  to 
need  any  such  completion  ?  and  how  is  the  fact  ac- 
complished ? 

Without  putting  the  subject  in  this  form,  it  is  re- 
markable that  we  so  readily  and  constantly  assume  the 
necessity  of  a  great  after-work  to  be  done  upon  the 
soul  of  our  child,  to  make  it  the  complete  man  or 
woman  we  desire  it  to  be.  Taken  as  being  merely 
born,  we  look  upon  it  as  a  barely  embryonic  life,  the 
possibility  or  rudimental  germ  of  a  man,  and  not  a 
man.  What  we  call  our  child's  training,  or  education, 
is  only  our  attempt  to  advance  or  bring  him  on  to- 
wards completeness.  He  is  to  be  instructed,  we  as- 
sume, corrected,  governed,  formed  to  self-government, 
unfolded  in  his  intelligence,  fashioned  in  his  tastes, 
configured  to  principles  of  honor  and  truth.  The  re- 
sult is  a  being  in  higher  quantity,  dignity,  and  power, 
in  a  finer  quality,  and  in  a  capacity,  both  of  action 
and  enjoyment,  immensely  enlarged.  Could  we  look 
in  upon  the  inner  scenery  of  thought  and  working  in 
two  human  creatures,  one  a  wild,  the  other  an  educated 
H 


98  THE   COMPLETING   OF  THE   SOUL. 

man,  how  different  should  we  perceive  them  to  be  in 
their  apprehensions,  currents  of  feeling,  prejudices, 
superstitions,  resentments,  satisfactions,  pleasures, 
causes  of  trouble,  views  of  life,  and  thoughts  of  what 
is  beyond.  Neither  will  be  really  complete,  but  how 
different  one  from  the  other — he  perhaps  that  was 
originally  most  gifted,  how  far  inferior  to  the  less 
gifted. 

At  the  same  time,  it  is  not  to  be  assumed  that  we 
are  right  in  all  our  conceptions  of  what  takes  place  in 
the  education  or  training  of  minds.  They  will  not  be 
complete  because  they  are  full-educated  in  the  intel- 
lectual sense.  Sometimes  they  will  in  fact  be  ham- 
pered and  stunted  by  their  education,  or  even  by  what 
is  considered  to  be  their  wonderful  attainments  in 
scholarship ;  crippled  in  their  inventiveness,  drugged 
by  the  wisdoms  of  their  great  authorities,  in  that 
manner  incapacitated  by  the  overload  they  have 
taken.  Perhaps  one  hour  with  God  would  have  done 
more  for  the  widening  out  of  their  consciousness,  and 
the  kindling  of  all  divinest  fires  in  their  powers  of 
thought  and  feeling,  than  many  such  whole  years  of 
drill  in  the  schools. 

Sometimes  we  allow  ourselves  to  think,  that  our 
child  is  going  to  be  complete  only  when  he  is  educated 
above  and  away  from  certain  ranges  of  employment. 
We  measure  his  completeness,  perhaps,  by  the  range 
for  which  we  prepare  him.  If  he  can  only  be  a 
blacksmith,  or  a  tanner,  or  even  a  school-teacher,  we 
perhaps  think  he  is  too  little  complete,  and  that  we 


THE   COMPLETING   OF   T  EI  E   SOUL.  99 

have  not  made  enough  of  him.  Were 'he  a  qualified 
commander,  banker,  physician,  lawyer,  we  should  be 
better  satisfied,  and  think  him  more  nearly  up  to  the 
measure  of  his  possibilities.  But  God  does  not  grade 
our  completeness  by  any  such  law.  He  may  have 
rated  Bezaleel  the  brazier,  far  above  Aaron  the  priest, 
and  considered  him  to  be  a  man  far  more  nearly  com- 
plete— I  really  suppose  that  he  was.  He  has  no  such 
thought  as  that  a  blacksmith,  or  a  tailor,  or  a  shep- 
herd, or  even  a  fisherman  at  his  net,  is  of  course  a 
man  incomplete,  or  at  all  less  complete  than  if  he 
were  the  light  of  a  college.  Who  ever  came  nearer 
to  being  mated  with  Shakspeare  than  the  tinker 
Banyan?  A  great,  growing,  grandly  unfolding  soul, 
can  be  fashioned  any  where,  if  only  God  is  with  him, 
and  his  faculty,  it  may  be,  will  be  completing  itself, 
as  truly  in  one  employment  as  in  another.  His  heart 
will  grow  as  big,  his  imagination  kindle  itself  in  fires 
to  him  of  as  great  beauty,  he  will  be  as  original,  as 
deep,  as  free,  and  will  swing  his  nature  into  as  high 
force  every  way,  in  using  a  hammer  as  in  using  a  pen. 
He  may  not  pass  the  scholarly  conventionalities  as 
well,  but  may  pass  the  eternal  dignities  better.  God 
nowhere  allows,  what  we  so  constantly  assume,  that 
souls  are  kept  back  from  their  completeness,  by  their 
trades,  and  grades,  and  employments.  He  is  going  to 
complete  them  all,  if  they  will  suffer  it,  in  the  highest 
and  most  perfect  form  of  being  possible.  In  what 
manner,  and  by  what  means,  will  be  shown  hereafter. 
I  only  go  thus  far  before  my  subject,  in  a  way  of  en- 


100  THE   COMPLETING    OF   THE   SOUL. 

larging  and  correcting  our  too  insufficient,  merely 
earthly  conceptions  of  what  the  soul's  completion  im- 
plies. No  mere  schooling,  or  human  training,  to 
whatever  grade  of  life  or  social  estimation  it  may 
raise,  is  any  but  the  faintest  approximation  to  a  true 
completion  of  the  soul. 

This  now  will  appear  more  fully  and  determinately, 
as  we  go  on  to  consider  the  supposed  incompleteness, 
and  show  wherein  it  lies.  If  it  were  a  question  re- 
lating to  the  first  man,  Adam,  in  his  lot  of  innocence, 
the  answer  would  be  more  simple  but  far  less  evident. 
We  should  say,  at  once,  that  with  all  his  perfect  har- 
monies and  beautiful  instincts,  he  is  yet  unexercised, 
unformed,  a  full  grown,  beautiful  child,  but  yet  a 
child.  That  his  perceptions  are  all  to  be  gotten,  his 
will  to  be  trained,  his  habits  formed,  his  memory 
stored,  his  love  unfolded  by  its  objects,  his  acquaint- 
ance with  God  practically  matured,  and  all  that  con- 
stitutes a  great  and  true  wisdom  learned.  Until  then 
he  is  an  essentially  incomplete  creature ;  so  incom- 
plete that  he  will  not  stand  fast  in  good,  but  plunge 
himself  into  wrong,  and  all  the  unspeakable  disasters 
of  wrong.  Indeed  we  shall  begin  to  see  that  our  first 
man,  commonly  thought  to  be  so  great  and  grandly 
perfect,  is  put  on  probation  only  that  he  may  get  his 
nature  completed  in  knowledge  and  right  habit,  and 
so  matured  in  good  that  he  will  come  out  able  to 
stand. 

Our  question,  after  this,  relates  to  him  partly  under 


THE    COMPLETING   OF   THE   SOUL.  101 

the  conditions  of  moral  disaster,  into  which  he  is 
fallen.  We  take  the  soul  as  it  is,  in  our  present  moral 
state,  and  the  moment  we  fasten  our  thought  down 
squarely  upon  it,  we  see,  by  every  sort  of  evidence 
crowding  upon  us,  how  very  incomplete  it  is. 

In  the  first  place  it  is  universally  conceded  that  it 
scarcely  at  all  answers  its  true  end.  There  might  be 
some  disagreement  as  to  what  that  true  end  is.  No 
matter  ;  whatever  it  be,  there  is  a  feeling  everywhere, 
in  every  body,  that  there  is  something  out  of  joint,  and 
that  souls  are  going  wide  of  their  mark  in  a  thousand 
ways.  Some  call  it  sin,  some  call  it  circumstance, 
some  mistake,  some  misdirection.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
while  the  heavenly  bodies  keep  their  track  to  the 
thousandth  part  of  a  hair,  and  every  great  power  of 
nature  exactly  performs  its  office,  for  some  reason  or 
other,  souls  go  amiss,  jerked  out  of  their  places  and 
turned  away  from  all  conceivable  ends.  And  the  fact 
is  proof,  beyond  a  question,  of  their  incompleteness. 
A  watch  is  complete  when  it  keeps  time,  not  when  it 
quarrels  with  all  the  notations  of  suns,  and  dials,  and 
almanacs.  A  vintage  process  is  complete  when  it 
makes  wine,  not  when  it  makes  vinegar.  Souls  in 
like  manner  are  complete  when  they  make  the  good 
they  were  made  for,  whatever  it  be,  fulfilling  exactly 
their  glorious  ends  and  uses.  And  as  long  as  they 
fail  of  that,  even  in  the  least  degree,  they  are  of  course 
incomplete. 

They  are  seen  again  to  be  incomplete,  in  the  fact 
that  their  enjoyment  is  not  full,  but  confessedly  a 
9* 


102     THE  COMPLETING  OF  THE  SOUL. 

great  way  short  of  if.  Their  instincts  are  unfulfilled, 
their  wants  are  unsupplied,  their  objects  are  not 
found.  They  seem  to  themselves  to  be  living  in  con- 
fined quarters.  They  are  hungry.  They  are  tor- 
mented by  a  general  unrest.  It  would  not  be  so  if 
they  were  complete.  They  would  be  exactly,  abso- 
lutely full  of  enjoyment,  just  as  by  their  sublime,  in- 
born necessity  they  crave  to  be.  When  every  thing  is 
complete,  all  outreaching  instincts  are  filled.  No  bee 
misses  the  shape  of  his  cells,  no  bird  of  passage  misses 
the  direction  of  his  flight,  no  plant  aspiring  towards 
the  light  misses  the  color  and  kind  of  its  flower.  No 
more  will  a  soul,  as  being  a  creature  set  for  joy,  miss 
the  state  of  absolutely  full  enjoyment,  unless  it  is 
somehow  incomplete,  sweltering  in  som«  torment  of 
negation,  or  inbred  disorder. 

Souls  again  do  not,  as  we  know  them,  meet,  or  at 
all  fulfill  the  standards  of  beauty,  truth,  and  right. 
These  are  standards  we  all  admit  for  souls,  just  as  all 
fruits  and  flowers  of  nature  have  the  standard  figures 
and  colors  of  their  kind.  An  apple  is  not  complete 
when  it  comes  out  a  gourd.  A  rose  is  not  complete 
when  it  comes  forth  blue  or  in  a  sandstone  grey.  An 
orange  is  not  complete  when  it  turns  out  a  melon  or  a 
potato.  What  then  does  it  signify,  when  a  soul  for- 
gets and  misses  its  kind,  when  it  puts  forth  itself  in 
deformity,  falsity,  and  wrong  ?  Requiring  itself  all 
exactest  and  most  perfect  beauty,  all  divinest  truth 
and  right,  and  having  these  for  the  standard  of  its 
kind,  how  comes  it  thus  to  be  turned  off,  into  all  abor- 


THE   COMPLETING   OF  THE   SOUL.  103 

tions  of  kind — evidently,  confessedly,  nay  even  uni- 
versally falling  away  from  itself  and  its  own  high 
nature  ?  Just  so  far  is  it  incomplete,  and  there  is  no 
other  answer  to  be  given. 

Take  another  and  more  entirely  surface  view  of 
mankind,  and  let  the  question  settle  itself,  as  it  will 
inevitably,  under  mere  first  impressions.  Why  then 
=»  is  itj  and  how,  that  so  much  meanness,  trickishness, 
oppression,  unregulated  and  wild  passion,  self-corro- 
sion, painfulness,  bitterness,  distraction,  are  found  in 
the  world  ?  How  is  it  that  no  soul  is  able  to  assert 
the  power  of  self-government,  steadily  and  stiffly 
enough  to  keep  itself  in  harmony  ?  Or  if  we  look 
away  at  society  and  the  outward  relations  of  persons, 
how  is  it  that  they  are  in  so  many  quarrels,  and  com- 
plaints of  wrong,  and  suits  of  redress,  so  continually 
plagued  by  acts  of  injustice  and  robbery  and  fraud, 
tormented  by  so  many  resentments,  scorched  by  so 
many  hatreds,  weeping  so  much,  bleeding  so  often, 
dying  on  so  vast  a  scale,  by  a  really  criminal  careless- 
ness in  the  use  of  their  machineries,  or  by  the  skillful, 
scientific  use  of  machineries  and  armies  gotten  up  to 
kill  %  What  can  we  think,  looking  on  such  facts,  but 
that  human  souls  are  under  some  terrible  dispossession 
that  crazes  their  action  ?  Who  can  even  imagine 
them  to  be  creatures  complete  in  their  order?  To  put 
the  whole  matter  under  the  eye,  in  a  very  comprehen- 
sible example,  suppose  all  the  grains  in  a  bushel  of 
wheat  were  to  commence  acting  in  themselves,  and 
towards  and  upon  one  another,  in  just  the  same  man- 


104  TIIE    COMPLETING    OF   THE   SOUL. 

ner  as  souls  are  seen  to  be  doing  in  the  specifications 
just  made,  what  a  bushel  of  tumult  would  it  be !  how 
wild,  and  hot,  and  fierce  the  little  stir  so  many  mal- 
contents would  make,  whirling  one  another  out  of  the 
measure,  and  finally  burning  up  the  measure  itself. 
The  only  reason  why  such  kernels  of  wheat  do  not 
behave  in  this  way,  is  that  they  are  every  one  com- 
plete creatures,  resting  in  their  own  perfect  mold,  and 
in  quiet  harmony  with  each  other — they  that  are  at 
the  top  lying  just  as  heavily,  and  they  that  are  at  the 
bottom  supporting  the  weight  just  as  bravely  as  they 
must.  Souls  completed  in  their  order  would  do  the 
same,  just  as  all  God's  finished  worlds  and  societies  in 
glory  are  able  to  do,  without  one  rasping  of  bad 
thought,  or  pang  of  mutual  accusation. 

Take  another  kind  of  illustration  still.  We  have  a 
way  of  saying,  how  often,  concerning  this  or  that 
man,  that  he  is  a  ruined  man,  or  we  take  a  different 
figure  and  say,  that  he  is  a  man  blasted  by  his  vices  or 
his  moral  distempers  ;  in  which  we  refer  mentally  to 
the  incomplete  state  of  the  flower,  or  the  germ  setting 
in  the  flower,  which  we  say  is  blasted  when  it  does  not 
come  to  fruit.  And  the  figure  is  rightly  chosen. 
These  men  so  blasted  are  incomplete  men,  men  in  the 
process  of  being  completed,  which  they  never  in  fact 
are  or  can  be.  And  so  in  the  awful  desolations  of 
talent,  power,  liberty,  and  hope,  we  see  about  us — 
strewing  the  world  under  the  heavens,  as  the  blasted 
germs  the  ground  under  a  tree — we  have  just  so  many 
proofs  that  man  who  can  not  fully  and  completely  be, 


THE    COMPLETING    OF   THE   SOUL.  105 

perishes  so  miserably,  because  he  can  not  bear  the  ex- 
periment. 

I  must  name  yet  one  other  evidence  of  the  incom- 
pleteness of  souls,  which,  though  apprehended  by  few, 
will  be  to  such  as  it  reaches  most  convincino-  of  all. 
It  is  a  very  curious  and  remarkable  distinction  of  souls 
that,  being  finite,  they  have  yet  infinite  wants  and  as- 
pirations ;  their  very  longing  is  to  be  somehow  cleared 
of  all  bounds  or  completed  in  the  outspreading  of 
some  infinite  possession.  And  this,  I  think,  however 
extravagant  it  may  seem,  is  the  exact  and  sober  im- 
port of  their  problem  in  life.  They  are  creatures  to 
be  somehow  infinited,  to  be  eternized  in  their  contin- 
uance of  good,  to  have  all  truth,  to  possess  all  things 
and  wield  all  power,  as  completely  as  if  it  were  theirs, 
and  reign  with  a  supreme  will,  having  every  thing 
done  just  as  if  it  were,  or  as  in  fact  being,  from  their 
own  will  and  counsel.  To  this  end  their  instinct  runs, 
and  stops  not  any  where  short  of  it.  They  are  so 
made  as  to  be  possibly  completed,  only  as  they  take  pos- 
session of  the  infinite — just  as  in  God  they  may,  and  as 
it  is  the  sublime  purpose  of  our  gospel  that  they  shall. 
What  a  falling  short,  therefore,  is  it,  when  they 
fall  short  of  God.  In  their  love  they  were  to  possess 
him  ;  in  their  self-centered,  bitterly  stringent  littleness, 
they  tear  themselves  away ;  and  the  result  is  that  their 
soul,  which  wants  to  fly  all  boundaries,  shrivels  to  a 
point  and  only  aches,  where  it  should  joyfully  spread 
itself  on  boundless  good,  and  in  that  element  begin  to 
reign. 


106  THE   COMPLETING   OF   THE   SOUL. 

But  if  souls  are  so  far  incomplete,  as  by  manifold 
tokens  we  see,  we  have  it  as  a  matter  next  in  point  to 
find,  how  in  Christ  they  can  be  made  complete.  And 
here  we  shall  discover  three  great  powers  and  agencies 
provided  for  this  purpose. 

1.  Inspirations.  Separated  from  God,  man  dwin- 
dles to  a  mere  speck,  he  is  nothing.  He  was  made  to 
have  magnitude,  and  be  in  flood,  by  having  great  in- 
spirations roll  under  him  and  through  him.  Existing 
therefore  in  mere  self-hood,  he  can  not  push  himself 
out  any  way  to  be  complete  as  from  himself.  A 
sponge  might  as  well  complete  itself  out  of  the  sea,  in 
dry  mid  air.  It  must  have  the  sea,  it  must  let  in  and 
possess  the  sea — all  the  currents,  and  tides,  and  even 
the  salt  of  it — drinking  and  swaying,  and  feeding  in 
its  element,  and  then,  as  being  sea-like  in  its  habit,  it 
fulfills  its  kind  and  is  complete.  Just  so  a  soul  must 
have  all  God's  properties  and  perfections  flowing  in 
and  through — liberty  and  life  in  his  life,  power  in 
his  power,  counsel  in  his  counsel.  It  must  be  true  in 
his  truth,  righteous  in  his  righteousness,  secure  in  his 
security.  That  is,  it  must  have  the  Infinite  Life, 
which  it  was  originally  made  for,  flowing  through  it, 
and  wafting  in  upon  it,  all  the  divine  properties  that 
feed  and  freshen,  empower  and  impel,  a  really  great 
and  complete  nature.  It  only  gasps  till  the  infinite 
touches  it,  and  then  it  lives. 

Now  it  is  this  everlasting  inspiration-force  that 
Christ  arranges  for,  and  promises  in  the  gift  of  the 
Spirit.     He  enters  the  soul  to  fill  out  every  lack,  and 


THE    COMPLETING   OF   THE   SOUL.  107 

every  secret  fault,  knowing  it  all  through,  with  a  most 
subtle  and  perfect  knowledge.  He  communicates,  im- 
breathes,  sheds  abroad  himself,  configuring  it  in- 
wardly to  all  that  is*  most  perfect  in  himself.  He  does 
it  by  a  working  in  the  nature  of  inspiration,  not  put- 
ting the  will  on  forming  this  or  that  particular  trait 
for  itself,  but  by  flooding  and  floating  it  on  towards 
this  or  that,  by  his  own  divine  motion,  turning  its 
very  liberty  towards  all  it  wants  and  needs  to  receive. 
These  inspirations  are  to  be  currents  running  exactly 
where  it  requires  to  be  carried,  and  it  is  just  as  if 
every  ship  in  the  sea  were  to  have  a  Gulf  Stream 
given  specially  to  it,  running  the  exact  course  of  its 
voyage,  and  drifting  it  on  to  its  port.  The  inspira- 
tions are  all  perfect,  they  are  adequate,  exact,  and 
steady,  so  that  no  completest  issue  may  be  missed. 
Then  again — 

2.  We  have  ideas  and  ideals  in  Christ,  who  lives 
God  in  the  human  figure  and  relation,  so  that  when 
we  think  him  as  a  person,  or  take  hold  of  him  in  be- 
lief, we  have  the  exact  figure  in  our  feeling  of  what 
requires  to  be  fashioned  and  completed  in  us.  We 
not  only  have  inspirations  thus  from  behind,  as  we  just 
now  saw,  but  we  have  ideals  before  us  to  kindle  inspi- 
rations in  our  eyes ;  so  that  while  we  could  not  even  con- 
ceive any  such  perfect  form  of  character,  item  by  item, 
we  can  yet  be  fashioned  by  it,  as  a  whole  displayed  to 
our  love,  in  the  living,  loving  person  of  our  Master. 
We  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  be  in  the  Spirit,  and 
keep   ourselves  in  Christ's  dear  walk  and  company, 


108  THE    COMPLETING   OF   THE   SOUL. 

and  we  shall  be  set  on  surely  and  constantly,  towards 
the  completeness  required.  Christ  is  the  mirror  that 
glasses  God's  image  before  us,  and  the  Spirit  is  the 
plastic  force  within,  that  transfers  and  photographs 
that  image ;  and  so,  beholding  as  in  a  glass  the  glory 
of  the  Lord,  we  are  changed  into  the  same  image 
from  glory  to  glory,  even  as  by  the  Spirit  of  the 
Lord. 

Then  once  more — 

3.  To  make  the  provision  perfect,  we  are  set  in  a 
wonderfully  various  scheme  of  relations,  that  we 
may  have  a  training  in  duties,  qualities,  virtues, 
equally  various,  and  be  perfected  in  them  and  by 
means  of  them.  Nothing  could  be  done  by  setting  us 
to  the  fashioning  and  finishing  of  a  character,  con- 
ceived by  ourselves  to  be  complete.  We  are  too 
coarse  and  clumsy  and  half-seeing  to  even  form  the 
notion  of  a  nobly  complete  excellence  ;  the  only  way 
is  to  put  us  milling  in  rounds  of  duty,  and  drill,  and 
sacrifice,  wherein  we  shall  be  trained  to  completeness 
without  conceiving  it.  And  we  have  it  as  our  remark- 
able advantage  in  Christ  and  the  faith  that  seals  our 
unity  with  him,  that  we  have  him  as  the  perfect  di- 
vine man  with  us  in  all  these  manifold  human  condi- 
tions. And  we  go  into  relation  with  our  fellows,  hav- 
ing him  in  company.  "We  admire  him,  and  by  our 
love  he  is  copied  into  us,  when  it  is  not  our  particular 
intent  to  copy  him.  We  see  how  he  lives  for  man- 
kind, and  we  make  common  cause  with  him,  in  the 
practice  of  a  like  self-sacrifice.     All  our  human  rela- 


THE   COMPLETING    OF   THE   SOUL.  1T.9 

tions  in  this  way  become  a  drill  of  occasions.  And 
we  are  to  get  an  experience  in  these  relations,  that  is 
both  corrective  and  creative.  In  our  relations  to  the 
church  and  the  ministry  of  the  word ;  in  our  rela- 
tions to  the  state  and  to  public  law ;  in  our  relations 
to  the  schools  ;  in  our  relations  to  the  family,  where 
age,  and  sex,  and  fatherhood,  and  motherhood,  and 
wifehood,  and  husbandhood,  and  childhood,  and  fam- 
ily property,  and  family  want,  and  ten  thousand  other 
things  are  concerned  ;  in  our  relations  of  business, 
and  debt,  and  credit,  and  hire,  and  employment ;  in 
our  relations  of  neighborhood  and  society ;  in  our  re- 
lations with  unbelievers,  neglectors,  irreligious,  unre- 
ligious,  them  that  go  to  public  worship,  and  them  that 
do  not ;  in  our  relations  to  the  poor  and  the  rich,  to 
superiors  and  to  inferiors,  to  friends,  and  flatterers, 
and  enemies,  and  such  as  do  us  wrong — in  all  these 
multiformities,  which  no  inventory  can  exhaust,  we 
are  put  on  just  as  many  multiformities  of  duty  and 
experience,  so  that  trying  to  do  the  exact  Christly 
thing  in  them  all,  we  are  to  get  benefit  in  so  many 
forms  and  degrees,  and  be  brought  on  thus  at  last, 
when  all  is  done  and  suffered,  to  a  real  and  full  com- 
pleteness in  the  will  of  God.  In  this  wondrous  mill, 
this  laboratory  of  training,  every  blemish  is  to  be  re- 
moved, and  the  soul  cut  into  form,  after  the  similitude 
of  a  palace,  polished  as  it  were  sapphire,  sharpened  as 
the  point  of  a  diamond.  There  will  at  last  be  no 
spot  or  wrinkle  left,  or  any  such  thing.  It  will  be 
washed,  whitened,  made  clean,  all  glorious  without, 
10 


110  THE    COMPLETING   OF   THE   SOUL. 

all  beautiful  within,  a  divinely  gifted  creature,  com- 
plete  and  perfect  in  God's  own  image  forever — ready 
for  the  enjoyment  of  God  in  all  his  sacrifices,  beati- 
tudes, benedictions,  and  judgments ;  ready  for  all 
God's  future,  and  to  have  that  future  as  its  own. 

This  now  as  I  conceive  is  the  real  completeness  of 
man.  And  the  impression  into  which  we  are  inevita- 
bly brought,  is  that  religion,  the  gospel  and  graces  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  are  the  only  power  that  is  able 
to  bring  man  forward  into  the  principal  intents  and 
highest  summits  of  his  nature. 

As  already  intimated,  we  try  education,  getting 
much  from  it,  but  never  any  thing  which  even  ap- 
proaches the  standard  of  completeness.*  Meantime, 
we  perfectly  know  that  we  only  run  the  risk  in  it  of  • 
making  a  small  misery  more  miserable,  and  a  small 
incapacity  a  greater,  fearfully  damaged  incapacity. 
Toothing  is  completed  by  it,  rounded  out,  and  put  at 
rest  in  good.  In  what  we  call  self-improvement,  a 
great  deal  more  is  attempted,  because-  the  endeavor  is 
to  cover  the  whole  ground  of  the  moral  and  religious 
nature.  But  if  there  is  no  cultivation  of  God  or  of 
Christ  within,  no  inspirations  moving,  the  work  is  a 
poor,  desultory  affair,  polishing  one  thing,  while  an- 
other more  important  goes  rough  by  neglect ;  and 
the  result  is,  finally,  that  the  great  self-improvement 
issues  in  a  great  self-consciousness,  painful  to  behold  ; 
a  self-pleased  finish  of  patch-work  painfully  made  up, 
*  y.  c.  c. 


THE    COMPLETING    OF   THE   SOUL.  Ill 

and  destitute  of  all  great  liberty.  Also,  to  itself,  how 
dry! 

We  try  self-government  and  self-regulation  under 
the  standards  of  morality,  but  the  most  we  obtain  or 
accomplish  is  to  pile  up  what  we  think  good  acts  on 
one  another,  as  some  day's  man  might  the  cents  of  his 
wages,  but  they  will  even  be  as  dry  as  cents,  with  as 
little  continuity  in  the  pile.  There  is  no  life  either  in 
the  acts  or  in  ourselves.  O  if  there  be  any  thing 
tedious  beyond  measure,  it  is  the  legality  method, 
going  after  a  total  of  merit  to  be  gotten  up  in  our- 
selves, by  good  acts  singly  and  persistently  done.  It 
would  even  choke  a  saint,  much  more  a  sinning  man. 

There  is  also  another  more  superlative  way  which  is 
greatly  praised  and  magnified,  and  is  therefore  much 
aspired  to  by  some,  I  mean  philosophy.  But  the 
ideals  raised  in  this  discipline,  will  be  forever  outrun- 
ning the  possible  attainments,  and  the  fine  philosophic 
consciousness  will  be  only  a  kind  of  equilibrium  under 
dryness  and  felt  limitation ;  a  bitter  kind  of  wisdom 
whose  quiet  is  the  assumed  quiet  only  of  a  mind  with* 
holden  from  all  highest  truth,  and  bending  itself  down 
upon  its  own  low  thoughts  and  opinions.  The  wars 
of  the  mind,  its  disorders  and  dissatisfactions,  are  ken- 
neled perhaps  under  what  is  called  the  philosophy,  but 
not  composed. 

There  is  nothing  in  short  but  religion,  or  the  life  in 
God,  that  can  be  looked  to  for  the  completion  of  a 
soul.  And  it  has  three  great  advantages  that  differ  it 
from  every  thing  else.    (1.)  That  it  takes  hold  of  the 


112  THE   COMPLETING   OF   THE   SOUL. 

soul's  eternity  and  its  sin,  to  raise  up,  harmonize,  in- 
wardly purify,  glorify  and  settle  it,  in  a  rest  of  ever- 
lasting equilibrium  in  God.  (2.)  That  it  takes  hold 
of  all  possible  conditions  and  callings,  completing  as 
truly  the  menial  as  the  employer,  the  bondman  as  the 
master,  the  unlettered  as  the  scholar,  the  man  that  is 
grimed  by  labor  as  the  man  of  leisure  or  the  monk  in 
his  cell.  (3.)  That  it  completes  one  degree  of  ca- 
pacity as  certainly  as  another,  preparing  even  the  fee- 
blest to  fill  out  its  measure  as  roundly  and  blissfully 
as  the  highest. 

Such  is  religion,  the  great  all-formative  grace  for 
man.  Nothing  but  this  can  even  dare  to  promise  any 
fit  completion  of  humanity.  All  the  harmonies,  all 
the  great  inspirations,  all  the  immovable  and  immor- 
tal confidences,  all  the  contacts  of  infinity  and  seals  of 
infinite  possessorship  are  here.  And  yet,  after  all, 
how  impossible  is  it,  when  we  show  all  this,  to  get 
by  the  feeling  of  men  not  religious,  that  there  is 
something  humiliating  in  religion  ?  What  absurdity  ! 
what  pitiable  unreason !  Religion  humiliating  to 
men  !  Religion  a  humiliation  not  to  be  endured  !  O 
my  friends,  if  it  be  so  with  you,  if  you  have  so  far 
lost  the  proportions  of  reason,  that  you  can  see  noth- 
ing to  respect  and  draw,  in  the  becoming  a  really 
complete  soul,  there  is  nothing  I  am  sure  that  can 
ever  beget  a  right  mind  in  you,  but  to  go  apart  and 
listen  for  the  secret  monitions  of  God.  Who  but  he 
can  ever  set  in  truth,  over  a  barrier  of  false  pride  so 
irrational  and  so  unaccountably  blind. 


THE   COMPLETING   OF   THE   SOUL.  113 

Some  of  you,  I  know,  have  better  thoughts,  and  yet 
have  many  great  struggles  with  your  own  remaining 
disorders.  You  are  mortified  often,  you  sometimes  half 
despair  of  yourselves.  Be  it  so,  yon  had  best  despair 
of  yourselves ;  for  you  can  not  complete  yourselves, 
and  can  only  fail  when  you  undertake  it.  But  the 
more  incompetent  you  seem  to  be,  the  more  fatally 
mixed  up  with  disorder  and  sin,  the  more  glorious  it  is 
that  Christ,  the  complete  man,  the  only  complete  man 
that  ever  trod  the  earth,  is  with  you.  Him  therefore 
you  are  to  follow,  in  his  brotherhood  to  walk.  Being 
complete  in  himself,  all  that  you  are  apprehended  for 
he  knows,  and  will  help  you  to  attain.  Enough ! 
enough  !  blessed  is  the  assurance.  But  ye  are  washed, 
but  ye  are  sanctified,  but  ye  are  glorified  in  the  name 
of  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  by  the  Spirit  of  our  God — ■ 
complete  in  him  who  is  the  head  of  all  principality 
and  power.  O  the  grand  conception  of  that  world  we 
have  before  us,  that  it  is  to  be  made  up  of  men  ever- 
lastingly complete !  God  grant  that  we  may  every  ono 
be  there. 
10* 


VI. 

THE  IMMEDIATE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD 


"  For  some  have  not  the  knowledge  of  God." — 1  Cor.  15 :  34. 

Who  then  are  these  Corinthian  disciples,  that  they 
have  not  so  much  as  the  knowledge  of  God  ?  Plainly 
enough  our  apostle  is  not  charging  them  here  with  ig- 
norance, but  with  some  lack  of  the  divine  illumination 
which  ought,  if  they  are  true  disciples,  to  be  in  them. 
They  certainly  know  God  in  the  traditional  and  merely 
cognitive  way.  Indeed  the  apostle  is  discoursing  to 
them  here  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead,  which  is 
itself  a  matter  based  in  Christian  ideas.  Besides,  he 
adds,  u  I  speak  this  to  your  shame ;"  having  it  in  view 
that  they  are  not  Pagans,  but  so  far  informed,  as  dis- 
ciples, that  they  ought  to  know  God  in  a  way  more 
interior. 

Wer  shall  best  understand  the  point  assumed  in  this 
impeachment,  I  think,  if  we  raise  the  distinction  be- 
tween knowing  God,  and  knowing  about  God.  Doubt- 
less, it  is  much  to  know  about  God,  about  his  opera- 
tions, his  works,  his  plans,  his  laws,  his  truth,  his  perfect 
attributes,  his  saving  mercies.  This  kind  of  knowl- 
edge is  presupposed  in  all  faith,  and  constitutes  the 
rational  ground  of  faith,  and  so  far  is  necessary  even 
(114) 


THE   IMMEDIATE    KNOWLEDGE    OF   GOD.    115 

to  salvation.  But  true  faith  itself  discovers  another 
and  more  absolute  kind  of  knowledge,  a  knowledge  of 
God  himself;  immediate,  personal  knowledge,  comma- 
out  of  no  report,  or  statement,  or  any  thing  called 
truth,  as  being  taught  in  language.  It  is  knowing 
God  within,  even  as  we  know  ourselves.  The  other  is 
only  a  knowing  about  God,  as  from  a  distance.  To 
put  this  matter  of  the  immediate  knowledge  of  God 
in  its  true  doctrinal  position,  it  may  be  well  to  say, 
that  we  have  two  denials  set  against  it,  both  as 
nearly  fatal  as  need  be  to  any  such  possibility.* 
One  is  the  denial  of  the  philosophers  outside  of  Chris- 
tianity, speculating  there  about  the  cognitive  functions, 
and  making  what  they  conceive  to  be  their  specially 
profound  discovery,  that  knowledges  are  possible  only 
of  things  relative.  Therefore,  God  being  infinite,  can 
not  be  known  —  God  is  unknowable.  They  say 
nothing  of  faith,  they  have  no  conception  of  any  such 
super-eminent,  almost  divine  talent  in  our  humanity, 
shut  up  or  drawn  away  from  God  by  our  sin — an  im- 
mediate sensing  power,  to  which  God  may  be  as  truly 
known,  as  we  know  the  distinct  existence  of  objects 
perceived  by  the  eyes.  Could  they  simply  trust  them- 
selves over  to  God,  to  live  by  his  tender  guidance  and 
true  inward  revelation,  they  would  never  again  call 
him  the  unknowable.  Meantime,  there  will  be  many 
children  of  sorrow,  unlearned  and  simple,  who  will 
easily  know  the  God  they  have  it  as  their  point  of 
philosophy  to  show  can  not  any  way  be  known  !  This 
*y.  c.  c. 


y 


116  THE    IMMEDIATE 

most  false  and  feeble  doctrine  of  negation,  I  do  not  feel 
called  upon  to  discuss — it  will  die  of  inanity  sooner 
than  it  can  by  argument. 

The  other  and  second  form  of  denial  as  regards  the 
immediate  knowledge  of  God,  sets  up  its  flag  inside 
of  the  Christian  church  and  among  the  muniments  of 
doctrine.  Here  the  possibility  of  faith  is  admitted, 
and  the  necessity  of  it  abundantly  magnified.  But 
the  faith  power  is  used  up,  it  is  conceived,  on  proposi- 
tions ;  that  is  propositions  which  affirm  something 
about  God.  It  does  not  go  through,  and  over,  and  be- 
yond, such  propositions,  to  meet  the  inward  revelation 
or  discovery  of  God  himself.  The  accepted  doctrine 
is  that  we  know,  or  can  know  God,  only  so  far  as 
we  know  something  about  him,  no  immediate  knowl- 
edge of  him  being  at  all  possible,  or  even  conceivable. 
The  continually  reiterated  assumption  is  that  never, 
in  our  most  sacred,  dearest,  deepest  moments  of  holy 
experience,  do  we  get  beyond  being  simply  acted  on 
by  certain  truths  we  know  about  God.  And  when, 
men  are  called  to  God,  saying,  "  Come  unto  me," 
they  understand  the  meaning  to  be,  that  they  are 
called  only  to  believe  something  about  him  put  in 
words,  and  work  their  feeling  or  their  faith  by  what 
the  words  supply.  They  do  not  even  conceive  it  as  a 
possibility,  that  we  should  know  God  himself  as  a 
presence  operative  in  us ;  even  as  we  know  the  sum- 
mer heat  by  its  pervasive  action  in  our  bodies.  We 
do  not  know  the  heat  by  report,  or  debate,  or  infer- 
ence, or  scientific  truth  interpreting  medially  between 


KNOWLEDGE    OF   GOD.  117 

as  and  it ;  we  do  not  see  it,  or  hear  it,  or  handle  it, 
and  yet  we  have  it  and  know  that  we  have,  by  the  in- 
ward sense  it  creates.  So  in  what  is  called  the  Chris- 
tian regeneration,  onr  being  born  of  God  implies  the 
immediate  revelation  of  God  within — all  which  these 
teachers  can  not  so  understand,  but  imagine  that  we 
are  born  of  something  about  God  rather ;  that  is  of 
truths,  affirmations,  notions,  working  medially  or  in- 
strumentally  between  us  and  God. 

What  then  is  the  truth  in  this  matter  ?  Why  it  is 
that  human  souls,  or  minds  are  just  as  truly  made  to 
be  filled  with  God's  internal  actuating  presence,  as 
human  bodies  are  to  be  tempered  internally  by  heat, 
or  as  matter  is  made  to  be  swayed  by  gravity,  or  the 
sky-space  to  be  irradiated  by  the  day.  God  is  to 
them  heat,  gravity,  day,  immediately  felt  as  such,  and 
known  by  the  self-revelation  of  his  person.  So  at 
least  it  was  originally  to  be,  and  so  it  would  be  now, 
had  not  this  presence  of  God  internally  and  personally 
to  souls,  this  quickening,  life-giving  God-sense,  been 
shut  off  by  sin.  For  by  this  they  tear  themselves 
away  from  God,  and  become  self-centered,  separated 
creatures,  even  as  growths  in  a  cavern,  or  as  fishes  on 
the  land,  having  no  longer  that  immediate  knowledge 
of  God  which  is  their  normal  state  of  subsistence. 
Henceforth  they  know  or  may  know,  much  about 
God,  but  they  do  not  know  God.  They  are  shut  up 
as  to  God,  dark  to  God,  except,  as  by  the  head,  they 
may  think,  discover,  learn,  or  reason  something  about 
Mm.     Never  do  they  know  him  till  he  becomes  cen- 


118  THE   IMMEDIATE 

tered  in  their  sonl  again  as  its  life,  and  the  crowning 
good  and  blessing  of  its  eternity.  And  this  is  fitly- 
called  being  born  of  God,  because  it  is  the  entering  of 
God  again  into  his  place — to  be  the  beginning  there 
of  a  new  movement  and  life  derivative  from  him,  and 
fed  by  the  springs  of  his  fullness  in  the  heart.  Which 
entering  in  of  God  supposes,  in  fact,  a  new  discovery 
of  God.  Not  that  the  subject  is  put  back  now  into  a 
new  cognitive  relation ;  his  cognitive  function  is  no- 
wise altered,  and  if  there  were  no  other,  would  still  be 
as  blind  to  God  as  before.  The  new  discovery  made 
is  made  by  faith,  opening  the  heart  to  receive,  and 
in  receiving  feel  or  inwardly  sense,  what  should 
have  been  the  original  and  always  normal  revela- 
tion. 

Is  it  then  to  be  said  or  imagined  that,  in  this  new 
birth,  or  new-begun  life  of  faith,  the  subject  really 
knows  God  by  an  immediate  knowledge?  He  mayT  not 
so  conceive  it,  I  answer,  but  it  is  none  the  less  true. 
He  will  speak,  it  may  be,  only  of  his  peace,  but  it  will 
seem  to  him  to  be  a  kind  of  divine  peace.  He  will 
testify  that  God  is  wondrously  near  to  him,  and  he 
will  put  into  that  word  near  something  like  a  sense  of 
Him.  He  will  be  conscious  and  will  say  that  he  is, 
of  a  strangely  luminous  condition,  as  if  his  whole  body, 
in  the  words  of  Christ,  were  full  of  light ;  and  all  the 
scripture  terms  that  set  forth  God  as  a  light,  and  a 
sun,  and  a  power  opposite  to  darkness,  will  come  in, 
as  it  were,  to  answer,  and  to  interpret  the  force  of  his 
experience.     Still  he  will  not  conceive,  it  may  be,  of 


KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD.  119 

any  such  thing  as  that  the  peace,  the  nearness,  the 
luminousness  of  his  soul,  supposes  an  immediate  knowl- 
edge of  God  now  discovered  to  him.  He  may  even 
disown  such  a  conception,  as  implying  a  kind  of  irrev- 
erence. Nevertheless  that  is  the  exact  verdict  of  his 
experience,  and  nothing  else  can  at  all  give  the  mean- 
ing of  it.  Indeed,  if  we  can  believe  it,  he  was  made 
originally  to  be  even  conscious  of  God  and  live  eter- 
nally in  that  kind  of  immediate  knowledge ;  which 
design  is  now  beginning,  for  the  first  time,  to  be  ful- 
filled. 

Thus  you  have  every  one  two  kinds  of  knowledge 
relating  to  yourself.  One  is  what  you  know  mediately 
about  yourself,  through  language,  and  one  that  which 
you  have  immediately  as  being  conscious  of  yourself. 
Under  the  first  you  learn  who  your  parents  were,  what 
others  think  of  you,  what  effects  the  world  has  on 
you,  what  power  you  have  over  it,  and  what  is 
thought  to  be  the  science,it  may  be,of  your  nature,  as 
an  intelligent  being.  Under  the  second  you  have  a 
knowledge  of  yourself  so  immediate,  that  there  is  no 
language  in  it,  no  thought,  no  act  of  judgment  or 
opinion,  you  simply  have  a  self-feeling  that  is  intuitive 
and  direct.  Now  you  were  made  to  have  just  such 
an  immediate  knowledge  of  God  as  of  yourself;  to  be 
conscious  of  God ;  only  this  consciousness  of  God  has 
been  closed  up  by  your  sin  and  is  now  set  open  by 
your  faith  ;  and  this  exactly  is  what  distinguishes  every 
soul  enlightened  by  the  Spirit,  and  born  of  God. 
"Whether  he  says  it  or  not,  this  is  the  real  account  of 


120  THE    IMMEDIATE 

his  experience,  that  God  is  now  revealed  in  him,  and 
that  he  begins  to  be  conscious  of  God  ;  for  it  is  a  fact, 
as  every  soul  thus  enlightened  will  testify,  that  he  is 
now  conscious,  not  of  himself  only,  but  of  a  certain 
otherness  moving  in  him ;  some  mysterious  power  of  good 
that  is  to  him  what  he  is  not  to  himself,  a  spring  of 
new-born  impulse,  a  living  of  new  life.  It  is  not  that 
he  sees  God  without  by  the  eye,  any  more  than  that 
he  sees  himself  without  by  the  eye,  when  he  is  con- 
scious of  himself;  it  is  not  that  he  has  any  mind- view 
of  God  awakened  in  him  any  more  than  that  he  has 
in  consciousness  a  mind-view  of  himself.  It  is  only 
that  he  has  the  sense  of  a  sublime  other  not  himself; 
a  power,  a  life,  a  transcendently  great,  felt  Other — 
who  is  really  and  truly  God.  Hence  the  rest,  and 
strength,  and  peace,  and  luminous  glory  into  which  he 
is  born — it  is  nothing  but  the  revelation  of  God  and 
the  immediate  knowledge  of  God.  Probably  enough 
he  will  not  say  this,  not  having  been  trained  or  accus- 
tomed to  this  mode  of  conceiving  the  change,  but  he 
will  say  that  God  is  near,  wonderfully,  gloriously  near, 
and  will  press  into  the  word  all  nearness  possible,  even 
such  as  to  include  in  fact  the  felt  consciousness  of 
God,  and  the  immediate  knowledge  of  his  pres- 
ence. 

Observe  now  in  what  manner  the  Scriptures  speak 
on  this  subject.  And  the  time  would  fail  me  to 
merely  recount  the  ways  in  which  it  is  given  as  the 
distinction  of  faith  or  holy  experience,  that  it  carries, 
in  some  way,  the  knowledge  of  God,  and  differs  the 


KNOWLEDGE    OF   GOD.  121 

subject  in  that  manner  from  all  that  are  under  the 
blindness  of  mere  nature. 

Discoursing  thus,  for  example,  of  the  state  of  love, 
it  distinguishes  that  state  as  being  one,  in  which  God 
and  God's  love  are  actually  revealed  in  the  soul — "  For 
love  is  of  God,  and  every  one  that  loveth  is  born  of 
God,  and  knoweth  God.  He  that  loveth  not  knoweth 
not  God,  for  God  is  love."  And  accordingly  there 
was  never  a  soul  on  earth  that  being  born  into  the 
great  principle  and  impulse  of  self-sacrificing  love,  did 
not  have  the  sense  of  God  in  it,  and  consciously  live, 
in  some  mysterious  participation  of  him. 

The  Holy  Spirit,  in  like  manner,  is  spoken  of  in  a 
great  many  ways,  as  the  intercoursing  life  and  imme- 
diate inward  manifestation  of  God.  Thus  he  is  said 
to  "  witness  with  our  spirit,"  which  means  that  there 
is  to  be  a  consciousness  raised  of  his  presence  in  the 
soul,  and  a  sense  of  reciprocity  established  by  what  is 
called  his  witnessing  with  us  ;  as  if  he  carried  him- 
self into  our  feeling  in  a  way  of  internal  dialogue. 
So  there  is  a  discerning  of  the  Spirit  spoken  of,  which 
does  not  mean  a  reasoning  out,  but  an  immediate 
knowing  of  the  mind  of  the  Spirit.  Christ  also  de- 
clares when  promising  the  Spirit,  that  the  world 
seeth  him  not,  neither  knoweth  him,  but  ye  know 
him,  for  he  dwelleth  with  you  and  shall  be  in  you." 
And  in  immediate  connection — "  the  world  seeth  me 
no  more,  but  ye  see  me — [know  me,  that  is,  in  him.] 
At  that  day  ye  shall  know  that  I  am  in  the  Father, 
and  ye  in  me  and  I  in  you."  And  then  again — "  He 
11 


122  THE   IMMEDIATE 

that  loveth  me  shall  be  loved  of  my  father,  and  I  will 
love  him,  and  will  manifest  myself  nnto  him." 
And  what  is  manifestation  but  immediate  knowl- 
edge % 

This  new  consciousness  of  God  is  plainly  declared 
by  the  apostle  when  he  says — "  That  Christ  may 
dwell  in  your  hearts  by  faith,  that  ye,  being  rooted  and 
grounded  in  love,  may  be  able  to  comprehend  with  all 
saints  what  is  the  breadth,  and  length,  and  depth,  and 
height,  and  to  know  the  love  of  Christ  which  passeth 
knowledge  ;  that  ye  might  be  filled  with  all  the  full- 
ness of  God."  What  language  but  this,  "  to  know  the 
love  that  passeth  knowledge,"  to  have  revealed  in 
conscious  participation  what,  can  not  be  known  or 
measured  by  the  notions  of  the  cognitive  understand- 
ing— what  but  this  can  fitly  express  the  sacred  visita- 
tion of  a  Christian  soul,  when  through  Christ  and  the 
Spirit  it  is  wakened  again  to  the  eternal  conscious- 
ness of  God. 

O  this  wonder  of  discovery,  the  knowledge  of  God — 
who  can  find  words  for  it,  or  the  change  it  must  needs 
make  !  It  even  makes  the  soul  another  creature  to 
itself.  Now  it  is  no  more  blank  to  God,  tortures 
itself  no  more  in  guesses  dim,  sighs  no  more — "  O 
that  I  knew  where  I  might  find  him."  It  has  recov- 
ered, as  it  were,  the  major  part  of  existence  that  be- 
fore was  lost ;  it  knows  not  only  itself,  but  it  has  the 
knowledge  of  God  ;  and  in  that  fact  it  is  raised  out  of 
its  mere  finite  speck  of  magnitude,  into  the  conscious 
participation  of  being  infinite.     Every  thing  is  now  be- 


KNOWLEDGE    OF   GOD.  123 

come  luminous.  Old  things  are  passed  away,  behold 
all  things  are  become  new — great  as  new,  and  holy  as 
great,  and  blessed  as  holy. 

But  there  is  an  objection  to  this  mode  of  conceiv- 
ing holy  experience,  as  implying  an  immediate  dis- 
covery of  God,  which  I  am  properly  required  to  no- 
tice. What  is  the  use,  in  this  view,  some  will  ask,  of 
a  Bible,  or  external  revelation  ?  what  use  of  the  incar- 
nation itself?  Are  not  these  advances  oh  our  outward 
knowledge  superseded  and  made  useless,  when  we 
conceive  that  God  is  offered  to  immediate  knowledge 
or  experience  ?  In  one  view  they  are,  and  in  another 
they  are  not.  Does  it  follow  that  because  we  have  an 
immediate  knowledge  of  heat,  we  have  therefore  no 
use  at  all  for  the  scientific  doctrine  of  heat,  or  the 
laws  by  which  it  is  expounded  ?  Suppose  it  is  a  part 
of  our  interest  in  this  article  of  heat,  that  we  be  able 
to  generate  more  of  it,  or  use  it  differently  and  with 
better  economy.  So  far  we  have  a  use  in  knowing 
about  heat,  as  well  as  knowing  heat.  In  the  same  way 
it  is  of  immense  consequence  to  know  every  thing  pos- 
sible about*God,  that  we  may  find  how  the  more  per- 
fectly to  know  God.  We  want,  in  this  manner,  the 
whole  Scripture,  and  not  least  the  incarnation  and  the 
cross,  and  the  story  of  the  pentecost.  These  things 
are  matters  given  to  us  about  God,  for  the  very  pur- 
pose of  showing  us  how  to  find  God.  The  inherent 
use  of  all  medial  knowledges,  all  truths,  cognitions, 
books,  appearings,  and  teachings,  is  that  they  bring 
us  in,  to  know  God  by  an  immediate  knowledge.     So 


124  THE   IMMEDIATE 

far  I  would  give  most  ready  assent  to  the  Quaker  doc- 
trine. We  are  never  to  put  the  book  between  us  and 
God,  to  give  us  second-hand  knowledges  of  him,  and 
there  accept  our  limit.  The  book  is  given  us  to  carry 
us  beyond  the  book,  and  put  us  in  the  way  of  finding 
God  as  others  have  found  him  ;  then  and  there  to  be  in 
the  Spirit  as  they  were,  and  know  Him  by  such  pri- 
vate interpretation  as  he  will  give  us.  The  mine  is 
given,  not  that  we  may  have  the  gold  already  dug, 
but  that  we  may  go  a  mining  for  ourselves.  And  as 
these  great  saints  of  holy  scripture  were  men  of  like 
passions  with  us,  it  is  to  be  our  glorious  privilege  that 
they  pilot  us  on,  by  telling  us  how  to  know  and  grow 
as  they  did. 

There  is  also  another  objection  to  be  noticed  here, 
which  moves  in  the  exactly  opposite  direction,  where 
those  who  know  not  God  complain  that  revelation,  as 
they  look  upon  it,  does  not  reveal  him,  and  that  God 
is  dark  to  them  still,  as  they  could  not  expect  him  to 
be.  If  there  be  a  God,  they  ask,  why  does  he  not 
stand  forth  and  be  known  as  a  Father  to  his  children  ? 
Why  allow  us  to  grope,  and  stumble  after  him,  or 
finally  miss  him  altogether?  They  are  not  satisfied 
with  the  Bible,  and  if  we  call  it  a  revelation  of  God, 
they  do  not  see  it.  Why  should  he  be  so  difficult  of 
discovery,  hid  in  recesses  so  deep,  and  only  doubtfully 
and  dimly  known  ?  If  there  be  a  God,  is  he  not  of 
such  consequence,  that  being  hid  is  even  a  wrong?  Is 
it  not  also  the  right  most  plainly  of  every  human 
creature,  to  have  an  easv  and  free  knowledge  of  him  ? 


KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD.  125 

I  certainly  think  it  is ;  only  we  must  not  make  him 
responsible  for  the  blear  and  self-blinding  of  our  sin. 
And  if  it  were  not  for  this,  I  think  we  should  all  see 
him  plainly  enough,  and  always,  and  every  where. 
For  it  is  the  whole  endeavor  of  his  management  to  be 
known.  He  not  only  meets  our  understanding  pro- 
cesses in  the  facts  of  his  Bible,  but  he  offers  himself  to 
be  known  without  any  process  at  all,  just  as  the  light 
is ;  nay,  if  we  will  have  it  so,  to  be  a  kind  of  second 
consciousness  in  us,  and  be  known  to  us  even  as  we 
know  ourselves.  He  is  even  pressing  himself  into 
knowledge  when  our  eyes  are  shut — in  our  self-will, 
our  hate,  our  denial,  our  desolation.  O  that  for  one 
hour  you  could  have  the  ingenuous  mind  that  is 
needed  to  really  give  him  welcome  !  No  more,  after 
that,  would  you  complain  of  him  that  he  withdraws 
from  your  knowledge. 

Now  this  exposition  of  God's  truth,  here  brought  to 
a  close,  converges  practically,  as  I  conceive,  on  a 
single  point  of  broadest  consequence  ;  correcting  a 
mistake  almost  universally  prevalent  in  some  greater 
or  less  degree ;  the  mistake  I  mean  of  being  over- 
much occupied  in  religion  with  matters  of  the  head. 
The  true  evidence  of  diseipleship  is  knowing  God. 
Other  men  know  something  about  him.  The  Chris- 
tian knows  him,  has  him  as  a  friend.  And  there  is  no 
substitute  for  this.  Observances,  beliefs,  opinions, 
self-testing  severities — all  these  are  idle  and  prove 
nothing.  If  a  man  knows  God,  it  is  a  fact  so  grand, 
11* 


126  THE    IMMEDIATE 

* 

so  full  of  meaning,  that  he  wants  no  evidence  beside. 
All  curious  explorations  and  deep  searches  in  this  mat- 
ter are  very  much  as  if  a  man  were  trying  himself 
carefully,  to  find  whether  he  sees  the  day.  If  a  man 
knows  God  in  the  revelation  of  his  Son,  he  is  ipso 
facto  full,  and  wants  no  more.  Therefore  he  should 
not  even  begin  to  be  elaborate  in  his  self-testings,  or 
his  questions  about  himself;  the  sign  is  a  bad  one. 
When  the  true  day  hath  dawned,  and  the  day-star 
hath  risen  in  the  heart,  the  man  himself  ought  to 
know  it  without  much  trouble.  Let  thine  eye  be 
single,  serve  God,  seek  God,  know  God  only,  and  thy 
whole  body  shall  be  full  of  light. 

Now  as  these  keep  oft'  the  light  of  their  day,  by  the 
ever-busy  meddling  of  their  understanding,  there  is 
another  class  who  have  never  found  the  day  by  reason 
of  their  over-busy,  over-curious  endeavors  to  make 
ready  for  it.  They  are  waiting,  and  reading,  and  rea- 
soning, as  they  think,  to  get  light  jor  conversion. 
They  are  going  to  be  converted  rationally,  nursing  all 
the  while  a  subtle  pride  of  this,  which  only  makes 
them  darker,  and  puts  them  farther  oft'.  They  quite 
misconceive  the  relation  of  our  previous  opinions, 
knowledges,  and  wisdoms,  to  the  state  of  faith  or  con- 
version ;  and  putting  themselves  down  upon  these, 
they  are  all  the  while  at  work,  as  they  think,  grading  a 
road  into  the  kingdom  of  God,  so  that  when  the  road 
is  done,  they  expect  to  be  steered  straight  in,  guided  by, 
and  rested  on,  the  rails  they  have  now  finally  laid 
down.     But  there  is,  alas  !  a  great  gulf  of  transition 


KNOWLEDGE    OF   GOD.  127 

here  to  be  passed,  that  forbids  eternally  any  such  con- 
ceit as  that.  There  is  no  such  relation  between  the 
knowing  about  God  and  knowing  God,  as  they  think 
there  is.  All  the  speculative  preparations  made,  and 
roads  of  knowledge  graded,  stop  inevitably  short  of 
the  kingdom,  and  whoever  imagines  that  he  is  going 
to  be  trundled  logically  along  the  plane  of  his  notional 
wisdoms  and  arguments,  into  God's  bosom,  will  as- 
suredly find  that  he  is  not  there,  but  has  fallen  in- 
finitely short  of  it.  What  then,  must  you  drop  out 
your  very  intelligence  in  order  to  become  a  Christian  ? 
Far  from  that  as  possible ;  you  are  only  required  to 
use  your  intelligence  intelligently.  That  is,  perceiv- 
ing that  all  you  know,  debate  and  think  about  God  is, 
at  best,  only  introductory  to  the  knowledge  of  God 
himself,  and  some  way  off,  take  care  rather  to  let 
go  your  speculations  and  open  your  heart  in  faith 
to  the  true  manifestation  of  God.  After  all  you 
have  reasoned,  faith  is  still  to  come.  The  roads 
of  the  natural  understanding  are  in  a  lower  plane, 
you  must  rise,  you  must  go  up  into  trust  and  know 
God — God  himself- — by  the  inward  discovery  of  his  in- 
finite spirit  and  person. 

What  is  wanted,  therefore,  for  us  all,  is  summed 
up  in  this  Christian  word  faith — faith  in  Christ,  or 
faith  in  God  ;  for  it  makes  no  difference.  Thinking 
and  questioning  stir  the  mind  about  God,  faith 
discerns  him,  and  by  it,  as  the  soul's  open  window, 
he  enters  to  be  discerned.  Would  that  all  of  you 
could    know   how   much    this    means.      Cease    then 


128       THE   IMMEDIATE    KNOWLEDGE,   ETC. 

from  your  questions,  all  ye  that  are  afar  off,  not 
knowing  God,  and  asking  sometimes,  with  a  sigh, 
where  shall  we  find  him  ?  Know  '  that  he  is  here 
in  thy  mouth  and  in  thy  heart ;  only  believe  in 
him,  and  you  shall  know  the  greatest  bliss  a  soul 
can  know,  the  Father  of  all  glory,  manifest  within. 


VII. 

RELIGIOUS  NATURE,  AND  RELIGIOUS 
CHARACTER. 


"That  they  should  seek  the  Lord,  if  haply  they  might  feel  after  him, 
and  find  him,  though  he  be  not  far  from  every  one  of  us." — Acts  17 :  27. 

Sometimes  a  truth  or  distinction  of  the  greatest  con- 
sequence will  come  into  expression  in  a  writer's  lan- 
guage, when  he  does  not  notice  it,  or  is  not  particularly 
aware  of  it  himself.  Thus  Paul,  in  his  notable  speech 
here  to  the  men  of  Athens,  drops  out,  unawares  to 
himself,  in  the  form  of  his  language,  a  most  accurately 
drawn  distinction  that  is  of  the  highest  possible  conse- 
quence. In  passing  through  their  city,  and  beholding 
their  devotions,  he  had  been  strangely  affected  by  find- 
ing, among  others,  an  altar  to  the  Unknown  God.  That 
was  the  type,  in  a  sense,  of  all  their  idolatries.  In 
them  all,  impelled  by  a  natural  instinct  for  religion, 
they  were  ignorantly  worshiping ;  wanting  a  God, 
and  feeling  after  him,  but  not  able  to  find  him.  And 
yet  he  is  not  hidden,  wants  to  be  found,  orders  every 
thing  to  bring  them  to  himself. 

This  expression,  "  feel  after,"  has  a  mental  reference 

plainly  enough  to  what  they,  as  God's  blind  offspring, 

were  doing ;  and  the  expression,  "  find  him,"  to  what 

God,  never  afar  off,  wants  to  have  them  do.     In  one, 

(129) 


130  RELIGIOUS   NATURE, 

the  deep  longings  of  a  nature  made  for  God  and  relig- 
ion is  recognized  ;  in  the  other,  a  satisfied  state  of  holy 
discovery  and  rest  in  God. 

"What  I  propose,  accordingly,  at  the  present  time,  is 
to  unfold,  if  I  can,  the  profoundly  real  and  practically 
wide  distinction  here  suggested,  between  having  a  relig- 
ious nature,  and  being  in  a  religious  life ;  or,  what  in  fact 
is  the  same,  between  feeling  after  God,  and  finding  him. 

In  proposing  this  distinction,  it  may  be  important  to 
say,  that  I  do  it  with  deliberate  reference  to  what  ap- 
pears to  be  a  great  religious  danger  of  our  time.  It 
used  to  be  the  common  doctrine  of  sermons,  as  many 
of  you  will  remember,  that  mankind,  under  sin,  have 
really  no  affinity  for  God  left.  Total  depravity  was 
made  total,  in  such  a  sense  as  to  leave  in  the  soul  no 
receptivity  for  God  whatever.  Human  nature  itself,  it 
was  declared,  is  opposition  to  God  ;  able,  therefore, 
only  to  be  the  more  exasperated  in  its  opposition,  the 
nearer  God  is  brought.  Instead  of  having  still  a  relig- 
ious nature,  it  seemed  to  be  supposed  that  we  have 
rather  an  anti-religious  nature,  and  that  nothing  can 
be  done  for  us  or  by  us  till  a  new  nature  is  given. 

All  which  now  is  virtually  gone  by.  We  familiarly 
recognize  now  the  fact  of  a  religious  nature  still  left, 
hungering  and  heaving  in  us,  and  beginning  oft  to  be 
in  want ;  longings  after  the  divine,  however  sup- 
pressed by  the  overmastering  tides  of  evil  and  vain  de- 
sire. The  soul,  we  believe  and  acknowledge,  has  a 
sensibility  to  good  and  to  God,  able  to  be  drawn  by 
Christ,  lifted  up,  capable  thus  of  being  recovered  to 


AND   RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  131 

holiness  without  being  literally  new-created  in  it. 
And  the  result  is  what  might  well  enough  be  expect- 
ed. Where  before,  the  soul,  heaving  and  hungering 
and  often  much  disturbed,  was  battered  and  beaten 
down  bj  the  huge  impossibility  of  religion, — dumbed 
even  to  prayer,  and  kept  in  stern  dead-lock,  waiting 
for  the  arrival  of  God's  omnipotence  to  remove  the  op- 
position of  nature,  and  give  the  new  heart  of  grace — 
we  are  passing  out  rather  now  into  a  kind  of  holiday 
freedom,  talking  piety  as  a  natural  taste,  enjoying  our 
fine  sentiments  of  reverence  to  God,  and  protesting  our 
great  admiration  of  Christ  and  his  beautiful  lessons, — 
all  in  the  plane  of  nature  itself.  Multitudes  of  us,  and 
especially  of  the  young,  congratulate  ourselves  that  we 
are  about  as  good  Christians,  on  the  ground  of  mere 
natural  sentiment,  as  need  be.  Nay,  we  are  somewhat 
better  Christians  than  there  used  to  be,  because  we  are 
more  philanthropic,  better  reformers,  and  in  that  are 
so  easily  up  to  the  level  of  Christianity,  in  a  fashion  of 
piety  so  much  more  intelligent.  Our  doctrine  of  the 
gospel  grows  flashy,  to  a  large  extent,  in  the  same 
manner.  High  sentiments,  beautiful  aspirations,  are 
taken,  sometimes  wittingly  and  sometimes  unwittingly, 
as  amounting  to  at  least  so  much  of  religious  charac- 
ter. Where  we  shall  be  landed,  or  stranded  rather,  in 
this  shallowing  process,  is  too  evident.  Christianity 
will  be  coming  to  be  more  and  more  nearly  a  lost  fact. 
A  vapid  and  soulless  naturalism  will  be  all  that  is  left, 
and  we  shall  keep  the  gospel  only  as  a  something  in  di- 
vine figure  and  form,  on  which  to  play  our  natural  sen- 


182  RELIGIOUS   NATURE, 

timents.  In  this  view  it  is  that  I  propose  the  distinc- 
tion stated,  between  having  a  religious  nature,  and  be- 
ing in  a  religious  life.  That  we  may  unfold  and  verify 
this  distinction,  consider, — 

1.  What  it  is,  accurately  understood,  to  have  a  relig- 
ious nature. 

It  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  to  be  a  man,  a  being 
made  for  God  and  religion  ;  so  far,  and  in  such  sense, 
a  religious  being.  It  implies,  in  other  words,  that  we 
are  so  made  as  to  want  God,  just  as  a  child's  nature 
wants  a  mother  and  a  father.  It  does  not  follow,  that 
the  child  ever  knew,  or,  practically  speaking,  ever  had 
either  one  or  the  other.  And  yet  the  want  is  none  the 
less  real  on  that  account ;  for  when  it  feels  itself  an  or- 
phan, out  on  the  broad  world  alone,  it  only  sighs  the 
more  bitterly,  it  may  be,  for  the  solitary  lot  it  is  in  :  and, 
when  it  notes  the  tender  love  and  faithful  sympathy  in 
which  other  children  are  sheltered  in  their  homes,  how 
sadly  does  it  grieve  and  weep  many  times  for  that  un- 
known, unremembered  parentage  it  can  never  look  to 
or  behold  !  So  it  is  with  our  religious  nature.  It  may 
not  consciously  pine  after  God,  as  an  orphan  for  his 
lost  parents  ;  and  yet  God  is  the  necessary  complement 
of  all  its  feelings,  hopes,  satisfactions,  and  endeavors. 
Without  God,  all  it  is  becomes  abortion.  It  wants 
God  as  its  completest,  almost  only  want;  feeling  in- 
stinctively after  him  even  in  its  voluntary  neglect  of 
him,  and  consciously  or  unconsciously,  willingly  or  un- 
willingly, longing  and  hungering  for  the  bread  of  his 
fatherly  relationship.     And  it  hungers  none  the  less 


AND   RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  133 

truly  that  it  stays  aloof  from  him,  refuses  to  seek  him 
in  prayer,  tries  to  forget  him  and  be  hidden  from  him, 
or  even  fights  against  all  terms  of  duty  towards  him  ; 
even  as  the  starving  madman  is  none  the  less  hungry, 
or  fevered  by  hunger,  that  he  refuses  to  eat. 

Now  this  natural  something  in  the  soul,  which 
makes  God  its  principal  and  first  want,  includes  very 
nearly  its  natural  everything.  It  has  not  a  faculty 
that  is  not  somehow  related  to  God.  It  feels  the 
beauty  of  God,  even  his  moral  beauty.  All  its  bosom- 
sentiments  would  play  around  him,  and  bask  in  his 
goodness.  Considering  who  God  is,  it  has  the  feeling 
of  admiration  towards  him,  rising  sometimes  even  up 
to  the  pitch  of  sublimity.  God's  creating  strength 
and  all-dominating  sovereignty  in  good,  are  just  that 
in  the  soul,  without  which  he  would  not  be  sufficiently 
great.  His  omnipresence,  thought  of,  it  may  be,  with 
dread,  is  yet  thought  of  also  as  the  needed  qualification 
of  a  complete  world-care  and  government.  Reason  gets 
at  no  limit  of  rest  and  satisfaction  till  it  culminates  in 
God.  The  imagination  flies  through  solitary  worlds 
of  vacancy  and  cold,  till  it  feels  the  brightness  of 
God's  light  on  its  wings,  and  meets  him  shining  every- 
where. Even  fear  wants  to  come  and  hide  in  his 
bosom ;  and  guilt,  withering  under  his  frown,  would 
only  frown  upon  him  if  he  were  not  exactly  just,  or 
less  just  than  he  is. 

There  is  a  kind  of  incipient  feeling  after  the  state  of 
piety  thus,  in  what  we  call  the  religious  nature.     It 
has  great  sentiments  swelling   in   its   depths,  honors 
12 


134  RELIGIOUS   NATURE, 

waiting  there  for  truth,  glad  emotions  waiting  tc 
spring  up  and  meet  the  face  of  God's  beauty,  aspira- 
tions climbing  after  his  recognition,  dependencies  of 
feeling  running  out  their  tendrils  to  lay  hold  of  him  in 
trust. 

Nor  let  any  one  imagine  that  these  things  are  at  all 
the  less  true,  under  the  perverse  and  perverting  effects 
of  human  depravity.  Human  nature  as  created  is  up- 
right, as  born  or  propagated,  a  corrupted  and  damaged 
nature.  Bat  however  corrupted  and  damaged,  how- 
ever fallen,  it  has  the  original  divine  impress  on  it, 
everywhere  discernible.  It  has  the  same  feelings,  sen- 
timents, powers  of  thought  and  affection,  the  same 
longings  and  aspirations,  only  choked  in  their  volume, 
and  crazed  by  the  stormy  battle  of  internal  discord  and 
passion  in  which  they  have  their  element.  The  most 
sad  fact — fact  and  also  evidence — of  human  depravity 
is,  that  the  religious  nature  stands  a  temple  still  for 
God,  only  scarred  and  blackened  by  the  brimstone  fires 
of  evil ;  more  majestic  possibly  as  a  ruin,  than  it  would 
be  if  it  did  not  prove  its  grandeur  by  the  desolations 
it  withstands. 

Denying  therefore,  as  we  must,  that  human  nature 
is  less  really  religious  because  it  is  depraved,  or  dam- 
aged by  sin, — as  on  mere  physiological  principles  it 
must  be — denying  also  that  it  is  made  incapable  of  ap- 
proving or  admiring  God,  or  being  drawn  by  his  beau- 
ty, it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  there  are  times  or  moods, 
when  it  will  even  be  exasperated  by  his  very  perfec- 
tions ;  that  is,  when  it  is  tormented  by  its  own  guilti- 


AND   RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  135 

ness,  and  resolved  on  courses  of  life  which  God  is 
known,  with  all  his  might  of  sovereignty,  to  oppose. 
At  such  times,  there  will  flame  up  a  horrible  lire  of 
malignity  ;  and  the  better  he  is,  the  more  dislike  of  him 
will  be  felt.  But  these  are  only  moods.  The  same 
persons,  in  a  different  mood,  when  they  are  not  think- 
ing of  themselves,  and  not  pressed  by  the  sense  of  con- 
flict with  him,  will  think  of  him  admiringly,  and  al- 
most lovingly ;  as  it  were,  feel  after  him,  to  know  him 
more  perfectly.  The  religious  nature  in  them  is  more 
constant  than  their  moods  of  perversity,  and  is  reaching 
after  God  in  a  certain  way  of  natural  desire  all  the 
while.  Holding  fast  now  these  conceptions  of  the  re- 
ligious nature,  let  us  pass  on, — 

2.  To  inquire  what  it  is  to  be  in  the  practically  relig- 
ious life  ;  or,  what  is  the  same,  to  be  in  religious  char- 
acter. There  is  nothing  practical  in  having  a  merely 
religious  nature.  A  very  bad  man  has  it  as  truly  as  a 
good :  the  most  confirmed  atheist  has  it.  Mere  natu- 
ral desire,  want,  sentiment  God-ward,  do  not  make  a 
religious  character.  They  are  even  compatible  and 
consistent  often  with  a  character  most  profoundly  irre- 
ligious. What  does  it  signify  that  the  nature  is  feel- 
ing after  God,  when  the  life  is  utterly  against  him  ?  If 
a  man  has  a  natural  sense  of  honor,  does  it  make  him 
an  honorable  man,  when  he  betrays  every  trust  and  vi- 
olates every  bond  of  friendship  ?  If  a  man  has  a  fine 
natural  sensibility  to  truth,  does  it  make  him  a  true 
man,  when  he  is  a  sophist  or  a  liar  in  all  the  practice 
of  his  life  \    Where  there  is  naturally  a  fine  sense  of 


136  RELIGIOUS   NATURE, 

moral  beauty,  and  a  capacity  to  draw  the  picture  of 
it  even  with  admirable  justice  and  artistic  skill,  does  it 
make  the  man  a  morally  beautiful  character,  when  his 
life,  as  will  not  seldom  happen,  is  a  life  in  utter  disor- 
der and  deformity  ?  Even  a  thief  may  have  a  good 
sentiment  of  justice,  and  be  only  the  more  consciously 
guilty  because  of  it.  There  may  even  be  a  wondrously 
tender  sensibility  in  the  heart  of  a  robber  or  assassin  ; 
such,  that  in  his  family,  or  among  his  clan,  he  will  be 
abundant  in  the  most  gentle  and  kindest  offices.  And 
in  just  the  same  way  a  man  may  have  the  finest  feel- 
ing of  natural  reverence  to  God,  the  highest  senti- 
ments of  admiration  for  God's  character,  the  grandest 
rational  convictions  of  his  value  to  the  world,  as  its 
moral  Governor  and  providential  Keeper,  and  yet  not 
have  so  much  as  a  trace  of  genuine  piety  in  the  life. 
He  may  even  go  so  far  as  to  enjoy  the  greatness  and 
beauty  of  God,  and  have  the  finest  things  to  say  of 
him,  and  have  no  trace  of  a  genuinely  religious  charac' 
ter,  any  more  than  if  he  were  enjoying  or  praising  a 
landscape.  He  will  do  the  two  things,  in  fact,  in  ex- 
actly the  same  manner;  and  one  will  have  just  as 
much  to  do  for  his  piety  as  the  other. 

What,  then,  is  it  to  be  a  practically  religious  man  ? 
When  is  it  and  how,  that  a  man  begins  to  be  religious 
in  the  sense  of  religious  character  ?  To  conceive  this 
matter  distinctly,  two  things  need  to  be  understood  be- 
forehand. First,  that  religious  character  is  more  than 
mere  natural  character,  and  different  from  it,  as  what 
we  are  by  constitution  is  different  from  what  we  do, 


AND    RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  187 

and  practically  seek,  and  freely  become.  It  is  that 
which  lies  in  choice,  and  for  which  we  are  thus  re- 
sponsible. It  is  made  by  what  the  soul's  liberty  goes 
after,  with  a  reigning  devotion, — what  it  chooses  and 
lives  for  as  its  end.  If  the  man,  therefore,  lives  for 
himself,  or  for  the  world,  as  all  men  do  in  the  way  of 
sin,  he  is  without  God,  without  religious  character, 
and  is  all  the  more  guilty  in  it,  that  his  nature  is  feel- 
ing after  God  in  throes  of  disappointed  longing.  Then 
again,  secondly,  it  must  be  understood  that  souls  are 
made  for  God,  to  have  him  always  present  in  them, 
and  working  in  their  liberty  itself,  even  as  gravity  is 
in  matter,  impelling  its  motions.  They  are  to  know 
God  and  be  conscious  of  him,  even  as  they  know  and 
are  conscious  of  themselves.  They  are  to  live  and  move 
and  have  their  being  in  him, — not  as  omnipresence 
only,  but  as  inward  revelation.  Inspiration  is  to  be 
their  life,  and  their  freedom  is  to  be  complete  in  the 
freedom  and  sovereignty  of  God.  As  they  are  God's 
offspring,  they  are  to  live  in  his  Fatherhood,  and  have 
their  finite  being  complemented  in  the  sense  of  his  in- 
finite greatness  and  perfection  inwardly  discovered. 

Assuming  these  two  points,  it  follows  that  a  man  is 
never  in  religious  character  till  he  has  found  God  ;  and 
that  he  will  never  find  him,  till  his  whole  voluntary  na- 
ture goes  after  him,  and  chimes  with  him  in  his  princi- 
ples and  ends.  Whatever  ends  he  has  had  of  his  own 
must  be  given  up,  as  being  his  own,  and  God's  must  be 
enthroned  in  him  by  a  supreme  devotion.  "  Ye  shall 
seek  for  me  and  find  me,  if  ye  search  for  me  with  all 
12* 


138  RELIGIOUS  NATURE, 

your  heart."  God  can  not  have  room  to  spread  him. 
self  in  the  soul,  and  fill  it  with  his  inspirations,  when  it 
is  hugging  itself,  and  is  habitually  set  on  having  its 
own  ways.  A  great  revolution  is  so  far  needed,  there- 
fore, if  it  is  to  find  God  ;  for  God  can  not  be  revealed 
in  it,  or  born  into  it,  save  when  it  comes  away  from  all 
its  lower  ends  to  be  in  God's.  No  moviugs  of  mere 
natural  sentiment  reach  this  point.  Nothing  but  a 
AToluntary  surrender  of  the  whole  life  to  his  will  pre- 
pares it  to  be  set  in  this  open  relation  to  God.  And 
just  here  it  is,  accordingly,  that  religious  character  be- 
gins. The  soul,  as  a  nature,  feeling  instinctively  after 
him,  baffled  still  and  kept  back  by  self-devotion,  has 
in  fact  no  trace  of  piety.  It  is  only  when  God  is  mov- 
ing into  it,  and  living  in  it,  that  the  true  piety  begins  : 
this  is  the  root  and  life  of  the  religious  character. 
Now  it  communes  knowingly  with  God,  receives  of 
God,  walks  with  God,  and  lives  by  a  hidden  life  from 
him.  Now,  for  the  first  time,  the  religious  nature  is 
fulfilled,  and  all  its  longings  rest  in  the  divine  fullness. 
It  has  found  God.     Observe  now, — 

3.  How  easily,  and  in  how  many  ways,  the  workings 
of  the  mere  religious  nature  may  be  confounded  with 
the  workings  of  religious  character,  and,  as  successful 
counterfeits,  take  their  place.  The  admiration  of 
God's  beauty — what  is  it,  some  will  say,  but  love  ?  Do 
we  not,  then,  all  of  us,  love  God  '(  The  sentimental 
pleasure  felt  in  God's  qualities, — what  is  it  but  the  real 
joy  of  religion  ?  and  how  satisfactory  it  is  to  think  so  ! 
Even  the  soul's  deep  throbs  of  want, — what  are  they 


AND    RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  189 

but  its  hungerings  after  righteousness?  and  that  void  of 
hunger  must  be  filled,  even  though  it  refuses  to  be.  So 
they  think.  In  short,  there  is  a  vast  religious  poetry 
in  the  soul's  nature  ;  and  what  is  it  all  but  a  religious 
character  begun  %  Is  any  thing  more  certain,  as  we 
look  on  man,  than  that  he  is  a  religious  being ;  and 
what  is  this,  by  a  straight  inference,  but  to  say  that  he 
has  a  naturally  religious  character  %  And  so  it  comes 
to  pass,  that  religion  is  the  same  thing  as  mere  natural 
sentiment ;  and  the  feeling  after  God — poor,  flashy 
delusion ! — substitutes  the  findino;  God  altogether. 
And  this  it  is  thought,  by  alas  how  many,  is  the 
more  intelligent  kind  of  religion  !  They  love  to  hear 
of  it,  because  it  plays  on  their  natural  sentiment  so 
finely.  It  is  almost  a  modern  discovery,  and  they  love 
to  be  religious  in  this  way.  It  will  not  organize  a 
church,  or  raise  a  mission,  or  instigate  a  prayer,  or  help 
any  one  to  bear  an  enemy,  and  even  quite  dispenses 
with  finding  God ;  the  Spirit  of  God  bearing  witness 
with  our  spirit  is  not  in  it ;  but,  for  all  this,  it  seems  to 
be  a  more  superlative  kind  of  religion  ! 

We  can  hardly  think  it  possible  that  a  feeble  impos- 
ture like  this  should  beguile  the  most  common  under- 
standing ;  and  yet  we  have  had  a  most  eloquent  teacher 
of  this  religion  vaunting  himself  in  it,  here  in  our  New 
England,  as  if  it  were  the  true  Christianity  !  He  finds 
a  natural  reverence  for  God  in  souls,  sentiments  of 
adoration  towards  him,  longings  that  feel  after  him  j 
and  that  he  calls  religion.  All  men  have  it;  no  man, 
even  the  worst,  wants  it.     And  the  true  doctrine  is, 


140  RELIGIOUS   NATURE, 

that,  living  in  the  plane  of  nature,  we  are  to  cultivate 
ourselves  in  it,  and  grow  better  always — certain  always 
of  being  religious  because  of  it.  And  this  kind  of 
mock  gospel  is  infusing  itself,  by  a  subtle  contagion, 
into  the  general  mind  of  our  times  ;  appearing  and  re- 
appearing in  our  literature,  sometimes  in  our  sermons, 
and  turning  our  youth  quite  away  from  every  thing 
most  vital  and  solid  in  the  supernatural,  soul-renewing 
doctrine  of  Christ. 

.  It  is  exactly  the  religion  of  Herod,  who  did  many 
tilings  under  John's  preaching,  and  heard  him  gladly, 
and  then  took  off  his  head  to  please  a  dancing  woman. 
He  had  all  the  sentiments  of  religion,  and  loved  to 
have  them  brought  into  play ;  but  the  graceful  trip  of 
dancing  feet  pleased  him  a  great  deal  more  !  Pilate, 
the  Roman,  had  the  same  religious  nature,  felt  the 
greatness,  quivered  in  sublimest  awe  of  Jesus,  and  de- 
voutly washed  his  hands  to  be  clear  of  the  blood,  and 
ended  by  giving  up  the  glorious  and  majestic  victim  to 
his  murderers.  Felix  had  the  same  religion  ;  so  had 
Agrippa ;  so  had  Balaam  ;  and  the  world  is  full  of  it, 
— sensibility  to  God,  truth,  right,  coupled  with  a  prac- 
tical non-reception  of  all. 

It  results,  accordingly,  just  as  we  should  expect,  that 
there  are  always  two  kinds  or  classes  of  religion  in  the 
world  ;  those  which  are  the  product  of  a  religious  sen- 
timent more  or  less  blind,  and  those  which  look  to  the 
regeneration  of  character ;  religions  that  are  feeling 
after  God,  and  a  true  religion  that  iinds  him,  and  dis- 
covers him  inwardly  to  the  soul.     The  religion  of  the 


AND   RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  141 

Athenians  was  of  the  former  class,  and  all  the  idola- 
trous religions  of  the  world  are  of  the  same  kind. 
What  a  sublime  and  almost  appalling  proof  of  the  re- 
ligious nature  of  man,  feeling  dimly,  groping  blindly, 
after  God,  imagining  that  he  is  somewhere  and  every- 
where ;  in  the  sun,  in  the  moon,  in  the  snakes  of  the 
ground,  the  beetles  of  the  air,  the  poor  tame  vegeta- 
bles of  the  garden,  the  many-headed  monsters  carved 
in  wood  or  stone,  that  never  were  any  where  but  in  the 
crazy  fancy  of  superstition  !  Look  on  these,  and  see 
how  man  feels  after  God  :  does  he  therefore  find  him  ? 
And  if  we  speak  of  character,  truth,  love,  mercy,  pu- 
rity, in  what  do  those  blind  struggles  of  our  almost  di- 
vine nature  issue,  but  in  a  defect  of  every  thing  heav- 
enly, and  even  comely  ?  What  but  hells  of  character 
are  these  idolatrous  religions  % 

Under  the  guise  of  Christianity,  too,  we  may  distin- 
guish at  least  two  kinds  of  religion,  that  are  corrupted 
in  a  greater  or  less  degree  by  infusions  of  the  same 
error.  One  is  the  religion  of  forms,  where  the  soul  is 
taken  by  them  as  a  matter  of  taste  ;  loves  to  play  rev- 
erence under  them  ;  has  a  great  delight  in  their  beau- 
ty, antiquity,  order ;  and  takes  the  mere  sentimental 
pleasure  it  has  in  them,  and  the  hope  of  being  buried 
in  them,  for  the  certain  reality  of  religious  character. 
The  other  is  a  religion  of  sentiment  throughout,  and 
fed  by  reason ;  feeling  after  God  in  the  beautiful  and 
grand  objects  of  nature  ;  pleased  to  have  such  high 
sentiments  towards  him  ;  taking  hold  of  these  senti- 
ments to  cultivate  them   more  and  more  ;    delighted 


142  RELIGIOUS   NATURE, 

with  Christ's  beautiful  lessons  of  natural  virtue  ;  and 
praising  him  even  as  the  finest  of  all  the  great  men  of 
the  world  !  It  is  not  intended,  under  either  of  these 
mistaken  forms  of  worship,  to  renounce  Christianity  ; 
and  the  mischiefs  they  propagate  in  their  adherents  are 
in  all  degrees.  Sometimes  the  infusion  of  sentiment- 
ality is  slight,  sometimes  it  quite  takes  the  place  of  pi- 
ety, and  there  is  no  room  left  for  so  much  as  a  vestige 
to  grow.  Now,  the  true  gospel  is  that  which  brings  a 
regenerative  power,  and  creates  the  soul  anew  in  God's 
image.  Any  religion  that  has  not  this  is  so  far  a  mock 
religion.  The  true  test  question,  therefore,  by  which 
every  man  is  to  try  his  religion  is  this, — have  I  found 
God  in  it?  Has  it  more  than  pleased  me?  has  it 
pierced  me,  brought  me  to  the  light,  given  me  to  know 
God  ?  If  it  has  not  done  this  for  you,  too  little  can 
not  be  made  of  it.  And  the  sooner  it  is  cast  behind 
you,  with  all  its  fine  sentiments,  in  a  total  turning  of 
your  heart  to  God  himself,  the  better.  The  life  of  God 
in  the  soul  of  man, — that  is  religious  character,  and  be- 
side that  there  is  none.  And  that  is  salvation,  with- 
out which  there  is  no  salvation.  For  this  it  is  that 
makes  salvation  ;  that  the  soul,  before  without  God 
alienated  from  the  life  of  God,  is  won  back  to  a  real 
God-welcome,  and  has  him  revealed  inwardly  in  holy 
Fatherhood,  as  the  life  of  its  life.  Hungry  as  the  prod- 
igal, it  has  come  back  from  its  wanderings  in  shameful 
penitence,  to  be  greeted  with  a  kiss,  and  clothed  again, 
and  feasted,  and  hear  its  Father  say,  "  O  dead,  thou 
art  alive  again !" 


JLND   RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  143 

Having  endeavored,  in  this  manner,  to  impress  the 
wide  distinction  between  a  religions  nature  and  a  relig- 
ious character,  between  feeling  after  God  and  finding 
him,  I  must  bring  my  illustrations  to  a  close. 

The  sum  of  the  whole  matter  is  this, — understand, 
have  it  never  to  be  disguised  from  you,  that  your  sal- 
vation lies  in  finding  God,  and  that  you  may  know 
your  salvation  only  as  you  know  that  you  have  found 
him, — know  that  you  have  found  him  as  the  graciously 
felt  preserver,  the  conductor,  guide,  peace,  joy  of  your 
heart.  You  will  not  know  him  outwardly,  but  with- 
in by  the  secret  flood  of  his  movement  in  your  life. 
You  will  be  consciously  configured  to  his  character  as 
once  you  were  not ;  raised,  exalted,  married  to  his  ends, 
one  wTith  him.  Count  yourself  no  Christian,  because 
you  like  thoughts  and  discourses  about  God.  Be 
jealous  of  any  gospel  that  merely  pleases  you,  and 
puts  your  natural  sentiments  aglow.  See  God  in  the 
flowers,  if  you  will ;  but  ask  no  gospel  made  up  of 
flowers.  Look  after  a  sinner's  gospel,  one  that  brings 
you  God  himself.  Doubtless  you  are  hungry  ;  there- 
fore you  want  bread,  and  not  any  mere  feeling  after 
it.  Understand  the  tragic  perils  of  your  sin,  and 
think  nothing  strong  enough  for  you  but  a  tragic  sal- 
vation. Require  a  transforming  religion,  not  a  pleas- 
ing. Be  enticed  by  no  flattering  sentimentalities, 
which  the  children  of  nature  are  everywhere  taking 
for  a  religion.  Refuse  to  sail  in  the  shallows  of  the 
sea  ;  strike  out  into  the  deep  waters  where  the  surges 
roll  heavily,  as  in  God's  majesty,  and  the  gales  of  the 


1-44  RELIGIOUS    NATURE, 

Spirit  blow.  Man  your  piety  as  a  great  expedition 
against  God's  enemies  and  yours,  and  hope  for  no  deli- 
cate salvation,  not  to  be  won  by  great  sacrifices  and 
perils. 

Let  me  add  in  this  connection,  also,  a  word  of  ne- 
cessary caution  respecting  a  particular  form  of  unbe- 
lief that  is  now  common.  How  many  are  beginning 
to  say,  and  have  it  for  a  fine  discovery,  that  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  distinction  of  kind  among  men  ; 
nothing  to  hang  a  distinction  of  worlds  upon  ;  noth- 
ing to  make  that  distinction  better  than  a  superstitious 
moonshine  of  the  past  ages  !  Saints,  and  not  saints  ; 
born  of  God,  and  not  born  ;  sons  of  God,  and  aliens, 
— these  are  all  a  kind  of  fiction  that  has  come  to  an 
end.  Are  we  not  all  religious,  all  good? — some  a 
little,  some  more,  and  some  very  good?  Even  where 
there  is  no  pretense  of  piety,  where  there  is  great 
wrong,  corruption,  brutality  of  life,  is  there  not  still  a 
little  sense  of  God  that  only  wants  to  be  increased ; 
some  tender  yearnings  after  God,  however  suppressed  ? 
"What  have  we,  then,  but  distinctions  of  degrees,  and 
no  distinction  of  kind  ?  Where,  then,  is  the  footing 
for  heaven  and  hell  ?  Let  this  fiction  go :  it  is  time 
now  to  be  clear  "of  it.  I  have  shown  you  here,  I  think, 
where  the  true  distinction  lies,  and  the  profound  reality 
of  it.  No  great  gulf  fixed  was  ever  thought  of  that  is 
wider  or  deeper,  or  more  absolute.  It  is  the  distinction 
between  a  religious  nature  and  a  religious  character. 
"We  all  have  such  a  nature,  feeling  after  God ;  but  we 
have  not  all  found  him.     "We.  all  have  religious  senti- 


AND    RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  145 

ments,  desires,  yearnings  ;  but  how  many  never  choose 
a  religious  end!  how  many,  in  fact,  never  did  any 
thing  in  the  practical  life,  but  trample  the  sentiments, 
desires,  yearnings  of  their  nature,  in  lives  of  disobedi 
ence,  and  a  fight  of  rejection  against  God  and  every 
holy  thing!  No,  my  friends,  the  gospel  distinctions 
are  not  gone  by ;  the  heaven  and  hell  of  the  Scripture 
are  not  yet  antiquated.  Here  they  stand,  based  in  the 
everlasting  distinction  of  kind :  darkness  and  light, 
chaos  and  order,  falsehood  and  truth,  are  not  more  op- 
posite, more  impossible  to  be  reconciled.  A  religious 
nature  signifies  nothing  where  there  is  no  religious 
character ;  nothing,  I  mean,  but  the  greater  wrong, 
and  wrath  the  more  deserved. 

Once  more,  it  must  strike  you  all  alike,  the  most  un- 
religions  as  truly  as  the  others,  that  it  is  a  very  great 
thing,  in  such  a  view  as  that  now  presented,  to  have  a 
religious  nature.  Oh,  if  you  had  any  true  sense  of  it, 
you  would  even  begin  to  tremble  at  the  thought  of 
yourselves  !  See,  the  whole  world  over,  in  all  ages 
and  times,  men  shaping  their  strange  religions  :  they 
are  groping  all  and  feeling  after  God,  to  them  the  un- 
known God.  And  you,  it  may  be,  are  doing  the  same. 
Your  great  nature,  made  in  his  image,  answers  to  him, 
reaches  after  him  in  suppressed  longings.  A  sublime 
uneasiness  keeps  you  astir,  and  you  know  not  what  it 
means.  You  think  of  it  often,  perhaps,  or  even  ispeak 
of  it  complainingly,  that  God  has  made  your  life  so 
strangely  barren.  The  secret  of  it  is,  that  you  are 
empty,  hungry,  shivering  in  the  cold,  for  want  of  God; 
13 


146  RELIGIOUS   NATURE, 

and  that  because  you  seek  him  not.  Always  feeling 
after  what  you  always  have  not,  and  even  refuse  to 
have  :  how  can  it  be  otherwise  ?  And  what  is  to  be- 
come of  this  great,  almost  divine  nature,  that  is  heaving 
thus  in  your  bosom  ?  This  will  become  of  it,  and  noth- 
ing else.  It  will  grope  and  writhe  and  sigh,  only  tast- 
ing now  and  then  little  admirations  of  God,  till  finally 
its  lofty  affinities  will  all  go  out  and  die.  All  faculties 
that  can  not  have  their  use  grow  stunted  and  thin  and 
withered,  as  inevitably  even  as  an  arm  or  a  leg. 
How  much  more  the  godlike  powers  and  affinities  of 
the  religious  nature,  when  for  years  and  years  they 
can  not  have  their  God, — receptivities  all,  yet  never  al- 
lowed to  receive. 

So  God  understands,  himself;  and  therefore  keeps 
himself  near,  wanting  to  be  found.  Even  as  the  apos- 
tle told  those  groping,  blind  men  of  Athens,  "  Though 
he  be  not  far  from  any  one  of  us."  They  were  all 
feeling  after  him  instinctively,  even  in  their  vices  and 
grim  idolatries ;  and  still  he  was  nigh,  ready,  behind 
their  thinnest  veils  of  thought,  to  break  through  into 
the  discovery  of  their  heart.  God  was  pronounced,  in 
fact,  upon  their  whole  nature,  in  every  faculty  and 
fibre.  And  yet  they  could  not  find  him.  Therefore, 
also,  he  became  at  last  incarnate  in  his  Son,  and  put 
himself  before  their  senses,  and  took  society  with  them, 
and  showed  them  what  they  might  have  thought  im- 
possible, that  the  unseen,  infinite  Being  has  a  suffering 
concern  for  just  those  hungry  natures  that  in  sin  are 
groping  after  him.     And  this  Christ  is  for   us    all, — ■ 


AND    RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  147 

"  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God." 
The  veil  is  taken  away.  To  come  unto  Jesus  now, 
and  believe  in  him  as  one  come  out  from  God  is  really 
to  find  him.  No  one  can  earnestly  seek  him  now,  and 
miss  of  him.  Mere  feeling  after  him  by  dim  instinct 
will  not  find  him,  but  earnest,  honest,  prayerful  seek- 
ing will.  And  therefore  he  declared  himself,  in  his 
first  sermon,  when  he  took  up  his  ministry, — would 
that  all  ye  hungering  and  groping  souls  could  hear 
the  promise  ! — "  Ask,  and  ye  shall  receive  ;  seek  and 
ye  shall  find  ;  knock,  and  it  shall  be  opened  unto  you. 
For  every  one  that  asketh  receiveth,  and  he  that  seek- 
eth  findeth,  and  to  him  that  knocketh  it  shall  be 
opened."  What  an  opening  is  that  which  opens  the 
discovery  of  God  !  and  what  a  finding  is  that  which 
finds  him  ! 


VIII. 

THE  PROPERTY  RIGHT  WE  ARE  TO  GET  IN 

SOULS. 


"  For  I  seek  not  yours,  but  you." — 2   Cor.  12  :    14. 

It  is  our  common  way  as  well  as  delusion,  to  be  de- 
siring what  men  have,  and  not  the  men  themselves  ;  to 
get  a  property  if  possible  out  of  their  property,  and 
not  to  create  the  same  by  our  own  industry.  The 
manner  of  our  great  Apostle  is  exactly  contrary.  He 
has  sought  these  wayward  Corinthians  in  two  voyages 
and  two  campaigns  of  gospel  service,  and  is  writing 
now  his  second  long  epistle  to  them,  promising  to 
come  a  third  time  and  restore  them,  if  possible,  from 
their  aberrations  and  scandals.  They  have  heretofore 
not  even  borne  his  expenses,  it  would  seem,  or  so 
much  as  taken  him  to  their  hospitality,  and  now  they 
are  most  ungratefully  decrying  and  depreciating  his 
ministry.  But  he  can  not  let  them  go,  though  the 
more  abundantly  he  loves  them  the  less  he  be  loved. 
Is  he  not  their  father  ?  and  it  is  not  the  common  way, 
he  reminds  them,  for  children  to  lay  up  for  the  pa- 
rents, but  the  parents  for  the  children.  Uninvited, 
therefore,  expecting  neither  welcome  nor  reward,  he 
says  he  will  come  to  them  again  for  their  sakes  only — 
"  for  I  seek  not  yours  but  you."  He  had  come  into  his 
(148) 


THE   PROPERTY    RIGHT,     ETC.  149 

master's  way  so  perfectly,  in  short,  that  other  men,  or 
souls,  were  valuable  to  him,  even  as  children  to  par- 
ents— the  best,  the  only  substance  that  he  cared  to 
seek.  Here,  then,  is  the  subject  I  propose  for  your 
consideration,  viz  : 

The  value  one  man  has  to  another  ;  or,  what  is  the  same, 
the  real  interest  of  property  which  a  true  disciple  has,  or 
may  have,  in  the  souls  of  other  men. 

It  is  common  to  speak  of  the  immense  value  of  the 
soul,  that  is,  the  value  it  has  to  itself;  it  is  common  to 
speak  of  the  love  which  one  soul  ought  to  have  to 
other  souls  ;  neither  of  these  is  the  subject  I  propose  ; 
but  it  is  to  show  the  real  value  of  one  soul,  or  man  to 
another,  as  being  in  some  very  true  sense  a  possessory 
value. 

I  suppose  there  may  be  some  who  had  never  such  a 
thought  occur  to  them  in  their  lives.  And  the  rea- 
son, if  we  care  to  understand  it,  is  that  in  the  great 
life-struggle  we  maintain  with  each  other,  under  the 
dominion  of  selfishness,  we  take  up  the  impression 
that  we  all  stand  in  the  way  of  each  other,  and  are 
really  nothing  but  a  hindrance  to  the  comfort  and  hap- 
piness one  of  another.  "We  have  so  many  public  wars 
and  private  quarrels,  so  many  rivalries,  the  problem 
of  obtaining  wealth  is  so  often  nothing  but  a  finding 
how  to  get  what  belongs  to  others ;  we  have  so  many 
frauds,  hatreds,  oppressions,  envies,  jealousies,  and  are 
brewing  so  constantly  in  these  selfish  turbulences,  that 
it  becomes  a  great  part  of  our  life  to  keep  off,  or  if 
13* 


150  THE    PROPERTY   RIGHT 

possible  to  keep  under,  one  another.  Hence  it  can 
not  even  occur  to  many,  as  their  grandest  right  and 
privilege,  to  get  a  property  in  one  another,  and  have 
it  for  a  permanent  and  dear  possession. 

Furthermore,  we  get  accustomed  to  the  idea  that 
there  is  no  property  but  legal  property ;  no  property 
right,  therefore,  in  a  man  to  be  thought  of,  save  the 
ownership  that  makes  him  a  slave.  Whereas  the 
dearest,  broadest  properties  we  have  are  not  legal. 
The  wife  does  not  legally  own  her  husband,  though 
she  says,  with  how  much  meaning,  "  he  is  mine." 
No  man  legally  owns  his  friend.  So,  also,  we  all  have 
a  most  real,  but  not  legal,  property  in  all  beautiful 
landscapes,  in  the  air  and  the  light,  in  the  stars  and 
the  ranges  of  the  sea.  In  a  still  different  view,  what- 
ever and  whomsoever  we  love,  in  the  sense  of  religion, 
becomes  a  positive  value  to  us,  though  it  be  no  legal 
value ;  for  it  is  the  nature  of  this  love  that  it  gets  a 
property  in  its  objects  ;  so  that  if  we  love  a  man's  suc- 
cesses, or  his  grounds,  or  his  gains,  we  possess  the 
usufruct,  in  a  more  complete  enjoyment,  possibly, 
than  he  does  himself.  Putting  aside  then  all  such  in- 
sufficient or  false  impressions,  I  now  undertake  to 
show  that  one  man  has  to  another  a  value  more  real 
than  gold,  or  lands,  or  any  legal  property  of  the  world 
can  have. 

And  I  open  the  argument  here  by  calling  your  at- 
tention to  the  fact  that  God  so  evidently  means  to 
make  every  community  valuable  to  every  other,  and 


WE   ARE   TO    GET   IN   SOULS.  151 

so  far,  at  least,  every  man  to  every  other.  We  see 
this  on  a  magnificent  scale  in  the  article  of  com- 
merce. Here  we  find  the  nations  all  at  work  for  each 
other,  in  so  many  different  climes  and  localities,  pre- 
paring one  for  another  articles  of  comfort,  sustenance, 
and  ornament  ;  and  then  commerce  intervening, 
makes  the  exchanges  ;  so  that  every  people  is  receiv- 
ing back  to  itself  supplies  that  the  whole  human  race, 
we  may  almost  say,  have  been  at  work  as  producers 
to  contribute.  Even  if  they  owned  the  industry  one 
of  another,  they  coidd  not  turn  it  to  better  account. 
Thus  if  you  raise  the  question  at  your  breakfast-table, 
on  almost  any  morning  of  the  year,  whence  come 
these  simple  comforts  of  food,  and  condiment,  and 
furniture,  you  will  find  that  almost  every  people  and 
clime  under  heaven  is  represented  as  a  contribu- 
tor— the  coffee  is  from  one,  the  tea  from  another,  the 
urns,  and  cups,  and  plates,  and  spoons,  it  may  be, 
from  as  many  others ;  and  so  on  down  to  the  sugar, 
and  salt,  and  pepper,  and  all  the  outfit  of  the  table. 
Your  breakfast  is  gotten  up  for  you,  as  it  were,  by  the 
whole  world  ;  and  so  far  you  possess  the  world. 

The  same,  again,  is  true  of  all  the  arts,  professions, 
trades  and  grades  of  employment,  in  a  given  com- 
munity. They  are  at  work  for  each  other  in  ways  of 
concurrent  service.  All  injustice,  wrong,  and  fraud 
excluded,  they  so  far  own  each  other.  Their  indus- 
tries and  gifts  are  all  so  many  complementary  contri- 
butions. The  capital,  the  science,  the  contriving 
heads,  the  operative  hands,  the  powers  of  every  sort, 


152  THE    PROPERTY    RIGHT 

are  mutually  concurrent,  mutually  own  each  other, 
and  taken  together,  constitute  a  complete  whole  of 
endowment — called  a  community  because  the  unity  is 
for  all,  and  a  commonwealth  because  the  wTeal  or 
wealth  is  common  to  all. 

And  again,  what  we  discover  in  these  mere  econ- 
omic relations  is  the  type  of  a  mutual  interest  and 
ownership,  in  qualities  that  are  personal.  The  very 
idea  of  society  and  the  social  nature  is  that  we  shall 
be  a  want,  and  a  gift  of  enjoyment,  one  to  another ; 
necessary  in  such  a  sense  to  each  other,  that  existence 
itself  can  be  only  worthless,  save  as  we  lay  hold  of 
each  other  in  some  fellow-feeling,  and  fulfill  answering 
conditions  of  social  benefit.  We  possess,  in  short,  so- 
ciety, and  society  is  universal  ownership. 

To  see  what  reality  there  is  in  this,  you  have  only 
to  imagine  how  desolate,  and  how  truly  insupportable, 
A'our  life  would  be  in  a  state  of  complete  solitude,  or 
absolutely  sole  existence.  Not  that  you  want  merely 
to  receive  outward  conveniences,  such  as  no  one  per- 
son can  produce,  or  prepare  for  himself — the  privation 
is  not  a  merely  economic  privation — you  want  society 
of  soul,  though  by  the  supposition  you  have  never 
known  what  it  is  ;  to  speak  and  be  spoken  to,  to 
play  out  feeling  and  have  it  played  back  by  some  an- 
swering nature  ;  to  see,  in  the  faces  of  men  like  your- 
self, the  beaming  intelligence  of  kindred  beings,  who 
are  struggling  with  the  same  thoughts,  and  suffering 
the  same  dread  mystery  of  experience  with  yourself. 
For  this  hitherto     unknown    something    you     ache, 


WE    ARE   TO    GET    IN   SOULS.  153 

though  you  can  not  imagine  where  it  is,  or  whence  it 
may  come.  So  pressing  is  this  want,  that  even  life 
itself  becomes  a  silent  agony.  You  wade  the  rivers, 
and  creep  through  the  forests,  and  climb  the  hills, 
looking  for  you  know  not  what,  resting  nowhere,  sigh- 
ing and  groaning  everywhere.  You  gaze  into  the  sky 
and  try  to  get  a  look  of  recognition  from  the  stars ; 
you  listen  to  the  wind  as  if  it  were  trying  to  vent 
itself  in  sighs  like  your  own  ;  you  peer  into  the  faces 
of  the  animals  and,  though  they  are  faces  plainly 
enough,  the  fellow-something  is  not  there.  The 
world,  in  short,  even  up  to  the  sun  and  the  stars,  is 
nothing  but  a  prison  about  you  of  absolute  solitary 
confinement ;  a  vast  grand  prison,  indeed,  but  yet  a 
prison  ;  nay,  a  horrible  dungeon,  dark  at  noonday  to 
your  heart ;  and  it  will  not  be  strange  if,  for  the  sim- 
ple want  of  society,  you  crumble  down  at  last  into 
idiocy,  as  malefactors  are  so  often  known  to  do, 
under  the  heavy  years  of  unnatural  torture  to  which 
they  are  subjected,  in  what  is  called  their  discipline 
of  solitary  confinement. 

What  we  call  society,  in  this  manner,  is  the  usu- 
fruct we  have  of  each  other,  and  has  a  property  value 
as  truly  as  the  food  that  supplies  our  bodies.  We 
may  not  commonly  think  of  it  in  this  way,  and  yet 
we  are  making  constant  experiment  of  the  fact,  even 
when  we  do  not.  Almost  every  full-aged  man,  for 
example,  has,  at  some  time,  been  a  weary  traveler, 
picking  his  way  through  some  wide  forest,  or  roaming 
across  some  solitary  prairie.      From  early  morn  till 


154  THE    PROPERTY    RIGHT 

noon,  and  toward  evening,  he  has  seen  no  human 
being,  heard  no  voice.  Consciously  his  tone  of  feel- 
ing has  been  sinking,  and  a  kind  of  oppression  has 
been  coming  upon  him.  The  long  solitude  of  so 
many  hours  has  damped  his  spirits,  and  he  begins  to 
imagine  how  good  it  would  be  to  meet  and  speak  to 
some  person.  At  last  he  sees  a  man  approaching  in 
the  distance.  They  stop,  of  course — the  two  stran- 
gers— and  change  salutations,  multiplying  inquiries 
that  have  no  object  but  simply  to  protract  the  inter- 
change or  feeding  time  of  their  social  nature ;  talking 
about  the  weather,  and  the  way,  which  both  of  them 
knew  well  enough  before ;  giving  volunteer  suggestions 
about  the  place  whence  they  are  from,  and  the  object, 
very  likely,  of  their  journey ;  till  finally,  when  they 
start  again,  which  they  will  do  with  a  lighter  heart 
and  a  freer  motion,  the  humanity  they  have  given  out, 
and  the  humanity  they  have  taken  in,  will  be  a  bath 
of  refreshment  to  them  for  whole  hours  after.  The 
same  thing  may  be  seen,  under  another  form,  in  the 
case  of  those  monks  and  eremites,  who,  like  St.  An- 
thony, withdrew  voluntarily  from  the  society  of  man, 
to  live  in  deserts  and  solitary  places  alone  ;  violating, 
in  the  name  of  religion,  all  God's  appointments  for 
their  life.  The  remarkable  thing  is  that,  in  so  many 
cases,  they  began  to  be  assaulted — as  they  thought,  and 
even  seemed  with  their  eyes  to  see — by  many  and 
fierce  devils  of  temptation.  It  was  only  the  necessary 
wail  of  their  own  disordered,  fevered  soul,  shaping 
into  visible  demons  the  crazy  woes  of  its  inward  life, 


WE   ARE   TO   GET   IN   SOULS.  155 

exasperated  and  frenzied  by  the  unnatural  torment 
of  their  solitude.  "What  should  they  see  but  devils, 
when  they  refuse  to  see  their  fellow-men  for  whom 
Christ  died? 

Again,  what  interest  every  soul  may  have,  or  what 
property  get,  in  other  souls,  will  be  seen  still  more  af- 
fectingly,  in  the  fact  that,  bittered  as  we  are  by  self- 
ishness, almost  every  tiling  we  do  looks,  in  some  way, 
to  the  approbation,  or  favoring  opinion,  or  inspiration 
of  others.  We  dress,  we  build,  we  cultivate  our  be- 
stowments  generally,  with  a  view  to  the  impressions 
or  opinions  of  others.  See,  for  example,  how  the 
great  soul  of  a  Newton  bows  itself  to  study  for  years 
and  years,  in  the  intensest  self- application,  that  he 
may  discover  and  give  to  the  world's  mind  his  grand 
expositions  of  light,  and  of  the  laws  of  the  astronomic 
worlds.  He  values  that  mind,  and  even  lives  for  what 
he  may  put  in  it,  or  dispense  to  it,  or  be  in  its 
thought.  So  of  the  great  poets,  painters,  sculptors, 
antiquarians,  writers  of  history,  travelers,  magistrates, 
heroes — no  matter  how  selfish  they  may  be,  they  are 
looking  still  to  other  souls,  or  minds,  and  resting 
their  great  expectations  there. 

I  have  lingered  thus  in  the  domain  of  the  natural 
life,  because  the  illustrations  here  furnished  are  so  im- 
pressive. Let  us  enter  now  the  field  of  Christian  love 
and  duty,  and  carry  our  argument  up  into  the  higher 
relations  here  existing.  If  selfishness  even  finds  so 
great  value  in  the  sentiments,  opinions,  homages  of 
other  men,  how  shall  it  be  with  goodness  and  benefac- 


156  THE    PROPERTY   RIGHT 

tion  ?  Here  it  is  that  we  come  out  into  the  great 
Apostle's  field  where  he  says — "  not  yours  but  you." 
"  It  is  not,"  he  would  say,  "  what  you  can  give  me,  or 
withhold  from  me,  but  it  is  what  I  can  do  to  you,  and 
be  in  you,  and  make  you  to  be — to  raise  you  up  out 
of  sin  into  purity  and  liberty  and  truth,  to  fill  you 
with  the  light  of  God  and  his  peace,  to  make  you  like 
God,  and  transform  your  disordered  nature  so  that 
your  inmost  currents  of  thought,  and  feeling,  and  life 
shall  be  changed  by  me  forever — this  is  my  reward, 
which,  if  I  may  get,  I  want  no  other.  For  this  I 
journey,  and  preach,  and  write,  and  pray,  and  will  do 
so,  till  I  have  made  you  my  joy  and  crown  of  re- 
joicing." He  does  not  conceive  that  he  is  saving 
souls  simply  as  being  valuable  to  themselves,  but  as 
being  valuable  also  to  him,  just  according  to  the  bene- 
fits he  enters  into  them.  He  makes  them  in  this  man- 
ner a  property  to  himself. 

Let  us  look  a  little  into  this  matter  of  property. 
How  does  it  come  ?  How  does  a  man,  for  example, 
come  to  be  acknowledged  as  the  owner  of  a  piece  of 
land  and  to  say  to  himself,  "  it  is  mine?"  The  gen- 
eral answer  given  to  this  question,  for  I  can  not  stay 
to  settle  it  by  discussion,  is  that  we  get  a  property  in 
things,  by  putting  our  industry  into  them,  in  ways  of 
use,  culture  and  improvement.  This  makes  our  title, 
and  then  the  ownership  is  bought  or  sold  as  by  title. 
Just  so  when  a  Christian  benefactor  enters  good  into 
a  soul ;  when  he  takes  it  away  from  the  wildness  and 
disorder  of  nature,  by  the  prayers  and  faithful  labors 


WE   ARE   TO   GET   IN    SOULS.  157 

he  expends  upon  it,  the  necessary  result  is  that  he  gets 
a  property  in  it,  feels  it  to  be  his,  values  it  as  being 
his.  Neither  is  it  any  thing  to  say  that  he  gets,  in 
this  manner,  no  exclusive  title  to  it,  therefore  no  prop- 
erty at  all.  No  kind  of  property  is  exclusive.  God 
is  still  concurrent  owner  of  all  the  lands  we  hold  in 
fee.  The  State  is  so  far  owner,  also,  that  we  hold 
them  as  of  the  State,  and  so  far  subject  to  State 
ownership  or  eminent  domain,  that  they  may  be 
rightfully  taken  for  public  uses,  when  it  is  necessary. 
So  a  man  may  get  ownership  in  his  neighbor,  and  his 
poor  brother,  and  the  State  may  have  ownership  in 
both,  and  God  a  higher  ownership  in  all.  And  the 
ownership  in  all  such  cases  is  only  the  more  real  be- 
cause it  is  not  exclusive.  So  then,  it  comes  to  pass 
that  improvement  in  a  soul  gets  ownership  in  it,  even 
as  it  does  in  land  ;  and  the  Christian  disciple  makes 
any  soul  that  he  saves  valuable  to  himself  and  a  prop- 
erty, just  according  to  what  it  is  made  to  be  to  itself, 
by  the  good  he  has  entered  into  it.  And  how  great 
and  blessed  a  property  it  is  to  him,  we  can  only  see 
by  a  careful  computation  of  the  values  by  which  he 
measures  it. 

First,  as  he  has  come  to  look  himself  on  the  eternal 
in  every  thing,  he  has  a  clear  perception  of  souls  as 
being  the  most  real  of  all  existences — more  real  than 
lands  and  gold,  and  a  vastly  higher  property — be- 
cause they  are  eternal,  and  the  title  once  gained  is 
only  consummated  by  death,  not  taken  away. 

Next,  iinding  this  or  that  human  spirit  or  soul,  in  a 
14 


158  THE   PROPEETY   RIGHT 

condition  of  darkness  and  disease  and  fatal  damage, 
he  begins  forthwith  to  find  an  object  in  it,  and  an  in- 
spiring hope  to  be  realized  in  its  necessity.  He  takes 
it  thus  upon  himself,  draws  near  to  it,  hovers  round  it 
in  love,  and  prayer,  and  gracious  words,  and  more 
gracious  example,  to  regain  it  to  truth  and  to  God. 
For  if  it  be  a  matter  so  inspiring  to  a  Newton  that  he 
may  put  into  other  minds  the  right  scientific  concep- 
tion of  light,  or  of  the  stars,  how  much  greater  and 
higher  the  interest  a  good  soul  has  in  imparting  to 
another  goodness  ;  the  element  of  its  own  divine 
peace  and  well-being. 

Then,  again,  as  we  get  a  property  in  other  men  by 
the  power  we  exert  in  them,  how  much  greater  the 
property  obtained  by  that  kind  of  power  which  is 
supernaturally,  transformingly  beneficent ;  that  which 
subdues  enmity,  illuminates  darkness,  fructifies  ster- 
ility, changes  discord  to  harmony,  war  to  peace,  and 
raises  a  spirit  in  ruin  up  to  be  a  temple  of  God's  in- 
dwelling life.  If  it  be  something  great  to  make  our- 
selves felt,  acknowledged,  respected, in  a  diseased  soul, 
how  much  more  to  change  that  disease  itself  into 
health ;  if  it  be  something  to  fill  a  place  in  bad  souls, 
how  much  more  to  make  them  beautiful  in  truth  and 
love  and  purity.  What  a  thought,  indeed,  is  this  for 
a  Christian  disciple  to  entertain,  that  he  may  exalt  the 
consciousness  of  a  human  soul,  or  spirit,  forever,  and 
live  in  it  forever  as  a  causality  of  joy  and  beauty. 
And  this  it  was  that  so  fervently  kindled  the  disin- 


WE    ARE   TO   GET   IN    SOULS.  159 

terested  zeal  of  our  Apostle — "  For  ye  are  our  glory 
and  joy." 

Furthermore,  when  one  has  gained  another  to  God 
and  a  holy  life,  there  is  a  most  dear,  everlasting  rela- 
tionship established  between  them — one  leading,  so  to 
speak,  the  other's  good  eternity,  and  the  other  behold- 
ing in  him  the  benefactor  by  whose  work  and  example 
he  is  consciously  exalted  forever — and  this  gracious 
relationship  will  give  them  an  eternally  mutual  prop- 
erty in  each  other.  And  so  all  Christian  friends  will 
have  gotten  a  property  in  each  other,  as  they  have 
done  each  other  good,  being  entered  thus  into  one 
another,  and  so  into  the  sense  of  relationships  an- 
swering to  their  mutual  benefactions  and  the  good 
offices  by  which  they  have  bought  an  everlasting  inte- 
rest in  the  feeling,  history,  personal  well-being  and 
inmost  life,  one  of  another.  In  this  manner  it  is 
given  us  for  our  beautiful  divine  privilege  to  have  a 
property  in  every  one  we  meet,  if  only  we  can  find 
how  to  bless  him.  Owning  society,  we  have  a  field 
where  mines  richer  than  those  of  gold  are  open  to  us 
on  every  side.  Going  after  what  men  have,  we  get 
nothing ;  after  men  themselves,  a  property  that  is 
everlasting. 

Hence,  also,  it  is,  that  the  Scriptures  of  God's  truth 
are  so  much  in  the  commendation  of  this  heavenly 
property.  If  we  go  after  fame,  they  tell  us  that  the 
name  of  the  wicked  shall  rot.  If  we  go  after  riches 
and  cover  ourselves  with  the  outward  splendors  of 
fortune,  they  tell  us  that  we  must  go  out  of  life  a3 


160  THE    PROPERTY    RIGHT 

poor  as  any  ;  for,  that  having  brought  nothing  mate- 
rial into  the  world,  we  can  carry  nothing  material  out. 
And  then  they  add,  do  the  works  of  ldve  and  truth, 
and  these  shall  go  with  you.  He  that  winneth  souls 
is  wise.  They  that  turn  many  to  righteousness  shall 
shine  as  the  stars  forever  and  ever.  Be  fishers  of 
men.  Watch  for  souls.  If  thy  brother  sin  against 
thee,  gain,  if  possible,  thy  brother.  Be  all  things  to 
all  men,  if  by  any  means  you  may  gain  some.  And 
then,  when  you  have  worn  out  all  your  powers  in 
benefactions  put  upon  souls,  and  believe  that  you  have 
many  who  will  be  your  crown  of  rejoicing  in  the  day 
of  the  Lord  Jesus — then,  I  say,  when  the  last  hour  is 
come,  and  the  scenes  of  your  mortal  labor  are  retiring 
from  your  sight,  have  it  for  your  song  of  triumph,  and 
leave  it  to  be  chanted  over  your  rest — "  Blessed  are 
the  dead  that  die  in  the  Lord ;  for  they  rest  from  their 
labors,  and  their  works  do  follow  them."  All  mate- 
rial properties  are  left  behind ;  these  can  not  follow  : 
but  all  the  properties  of  duty  and  love  must  follow, 
and  be  gathered  in  after  you  to  bless  your  fidelity,  and 
crown  your  peace,  and  be  your  sacred  wealth  forever. 
Then  it  shall  be  seen  what  is  meant  by  the  value  of 
one  soul  to  another. 

Just  here,  in  fact,  will  be  opened  to  your  now  puri- 
fied love  the  discovery  of  this  great  truth  ;  viz.,  that 
there  is  indeed  no  real  property  at  all  but  spirit-prop- 
erty, or  property  in  spirit ;  a  possession,  that  is,  by 
each  soul  of  what  he  has  added  to  the  moral  universe 
of  the  good.     All  values  here  become  social,  values  of 


WE   ARE   TO    GET   IN   SOULS.  161 

truth,  and  feeling,  and  worship,  and  conscious  affinity 
with  God.  And  this  is  heaven;  the  state  of  mutual 
ownership  and  everlasting  usufruct,  prepared  in  all 
God's  righteous  populations,  by  what  they  have  right- 
eously done. 

Accepting  now  the  solid  and  sublimely  practical 
truth  thus  carefully  expounded,  the  salvation  of  men 
is  seen  to  be  a  work  that  ought  to  engage  every  Chris- 
tian, and  a  work  that  to  be  fitly  done,  must  be  heart- 
ily and  energetically  done.  If  we  talk  of  it  simply 
as  a  duty,  and  push  ourselves  into  it  by  that  kind  of 
compulsion,  we  shall  do  nothing  but  simply  to  make  a 
feint  of  it.  We  may  tell  how  great  value  the  souls 
we  are  after  have  to  themselves  ;  but,  if  they  have  no 
value  to  us,  they  might  as  well  have  none  at  all.  It 
is  unfortunate,  in  this  matter,  that  we  speak  of  souls 
and  not  of  men  ;  for  soul  is  a  ghostly  word,  and  we 
are  doubting,  half  the  time,  whether  a  creature  so  far 
out  of  body  is  any  thing.  If  we  speak  of  souls,  let 
them  be  men,  everlasting  men,  whom  we  everlastingly 
want,  and  have  it  for  our  privilege  to  gain,  our  right 
to  enjoy ;  and  then  what  practical  energy  and  holy 
stress  will  there  be  in  our  endeavor.  Our  difficulty, 
in  this  matter,  is  that  we  are  too  delicate,  too  tenderly 
conventional,  too  mindful  of  the  respectabilities.  We 
are  so  careful  to  avoid  excess  that  we  can  not  be 
earnest  enough  to  show  any  due  valuation  of  our  ob- 
ject. See  what  stress  of  exertion  we  display  in  the 
pursuit  of  gain — what  sharpness  of  attention  we  prac- 
tice, what  watching  of  opportunities,  what  indefatiga- 
14* 


162  THE    PROPERTY   RIGHT 

ble  contriving,  what  persistency.  See,  again,  how  we 
put  ourselves  to  the  work  in  a  political  campaign. 
What  mean  these  great  assemblages,  these  nightly 
harangues,  these  processions,  these  thousand  and  one 
consultations  at  the  corners  of  the  streets — all  this 
heavy  strain  of  action,  what  does  it  mean  ?  Simply 
that  a  great  cause  is  earnestly  pressed  according  to  its 
supposed  value.  The  object  is  to  gain  voices  or  votes, 
and  the  words  are,  "  yours  but  not  you."  What,  then 
shall  be  the  stress  of  any  single  man,  or  church  of 
God,  when  the  point  is  to  gain  everlastingly  the  men 
themselves  ?  If  there  is  so  little  fear  of  excess  when 
we  are  after  votes,  how  much  less  should  there  be 
when  we  are  after  the  men.  The  intensest  energy  in  a 
work  so  nearly  divine,  the  most  earnest  endeavor,  the 
wisest  adjustment  of  means  in  the  possible  compass  of 
invention,  labor  in  season  and  out  of  season,  supplica- 
tions that  are  groanings  with  Christ  in  his  Gethsemane 
— these  are  the  way  of  all  true  Christian  men  and  as- 
semblies. 

To  this  end,  my  brethren,  consider  well  that  you  are 
set  to  gain  a  property  in  every  man  you  save.  In 
some  dearest,  truest  sense,  he  is  to  be  yours  forever,  to 
own  you  as  his  benefactor,  and  to  be  your  crown  of 
rejoicing,  having  your  life  entered  into  and  working 
through  his  forever.  Taking  it  as  the  law  of  his 
ministry — "  not  yours  but  you,"  what  a  glorious  com- 
pany did  our  great  Apostle  gather  in  to  be  with  him, 
to  pack,  as  it  were,  the  heavenly  mansions,  and  be  in 
the  everlasting  unfolding  of  their  life  and  blessedness, 


WE   ARE   TO   GET   IN   SOULS.  163 

his  ever  increasing  property !  What  a  world  of 
riches,  too,  is  that  great  commonwealth  of  blessing  to 
be,  where  so  many  ties  of  mutual  ownership  and  bene- 
faction are  to  exist  forever.  There  are  mothers  that 
have  brought  in  their  children,  pastors  that  have 
brought  in  their  flocks,  teachers  that  have  won  their 
classes,  employers  that  have  gained  their  employed, 
young  friends  that  have  led  in  their  comrades,  sick 
and  solitary,  whose  prayers  have  brought  salvation  to 
strangers  or  the  great  in  high  places,  who  never  knew 
till  now  their  nameless  benefactors.  These  all  have 
taken  possession,  so  to  speak,  of  one  another.  As 
they  learned  to  say  "  not  yours  but  you,"  so  they  are 
allowed  henceforth,  in  loving  thought,  to  say,  "  these 
are  mine."  And  this  adjective  mine,  how  steadily  are 
we  educated  into  it ;  as  if  it  were  God's  purpose,  first 
of  all,  to  waken  the  sense  of  property  in  us,  that  we 
may  be  set  every  one  upon  the  endeavor  to  win  a  pos- 
session for  eternity.  This  property  notion  that  puts 
us  delving,  striving,  going  to  the  death  for  gain,  is 
only  to  be  converted,  not  to  be  disappointed.  A  bub- 
ble in  itself,  it  foreshadows  an  everlasting  reality. 
For  when  it  is  fulfilled  in  the  grand,  eternal  future  to 
which  we  are  going,  we  shall  find  that  heaven  itself  is 
but  a  glorious,  enduring  ownership. 

Consider,  also,  how  this  double-acting  property  re- 
lation holds  good,  even  between  Christ  and  his  people. 
"  Not  yours  but  you  "  is  the  principle  that  brings  him 
into  the  world.  Understand  how  a  perfectly  good, 
great,  unselfish,  loving  and  true  mind  will  value  a 


164  THE   PROPERTY   RIGHT 

populous  world  of  mind  in  ruins,  and  the  seeming  dis- 
proportion of  the  cross  vanishes.  And  when  we  hear 
him  say  and  repeat,  in  words  of  visible  endearment, 
"  those  whom  thou  hast  given  me,"  we  can  see  that  he 
is  counting  over  his  property  beforehand.  For  this  he 
travels  in  the  greatness  of  his  strength,  for  this  he  is 
red  in  his  apparel,  and  treads  the  wine-press  alone. 
All  the  amazing  stress  of  his  sacrifice  is  crowded  on 
by  the  immense  valuation  he  has  of  the  prize  to  be 
gained.  And  then  when  he  has  made  that  gain,  and 
his  everlasting  property  in  those  that  were  given  him 
is  established  by  the  purchase  of  his  sacrifice,  what 
stronger  tap-root  of  confidence  could  we  have  than  to 
hear  him  add — "  and  no  man  shall  pluck  them  out  of 
my  hand."  We  can  even  see  that  he  would  sooner 
die  again  than  give  us  up.  O,  thou  timid,  misgiving 
soul,  distrust  thyself  as  thou  wilt,  only  do  not  distrust 
the  unalterable  ownership  of  thy  Master  !  As  thou 
art  Christ's  sure  property,  given  him  before  the 
foundation  of  the  world,  that  foundation  will  sooner 
break  down  than  his  strong  title  of  possession.  Did 
he  not  also  say — "  I  will  that  those  whom  thou  hast 
given  me  be  with  me  where  I  am  ?"  What,  then, 
shall  we  answer,  each  one  for  himself,  but  this — "  I 
will,  O  Master  and  Lord,  that  I  be  with  thee  where 
thou  art — have  me  thus  for  thy  possession,  and  I  ask 
no  more." 

And  yet  there  is  more ;  for  as  there  is  no  exclusive 
right  in  the  benevolent  properties — all  brothers,  in  all 
circles  of  brotherhood,  owning  each    other — so   it   is 


WE   ARE  TO   GET   IN  SOULS.  165 

given  us  to  own  even  Jesns  himself;  to  say,  "  O  Christ 
thou  art  mine," — "  My  Lord  and  my  God," — "Whom 
have  I  in  heaven  but  thee."  Having  thee,  I  can 
easily  renounce,  or  lose,  all  things  beside.  I  would 
not  care  to  possess,  even  if  I  could,  thy  stars.  Enough 
that  I  shall  possess  the  internal  contents  and  the 
bosom  furniture  of  thy  divine  excellence ;  the  sea-full 
of  thy  love  wherein  the  leviathans  of  thy  purposes 
play ;  the  splendors  of  thy  intelligence,  which  make 
my  day  eternal  without  any  sun  ;  thy  great  will  which 
makes  me  sufficient  in  power ;  all  thy  goodness  and 
beauty,  all  thy  plans  and  dispositions ;  and  shall  I  not 
be  so  established  forever — let  me  humbly  dare  to 
speak  it — in  the  dear  blessed  ownership  of  Christ  and 
his  kingdom  ? 


IX. 

THE  DISSOLVING  OF  DOUBTS 


"  And  I  have  heard  of  thee,  that  thou  canst  make  interpretations  and 
dissolve  doubts." — Dan.  5:  16. 

Doubts  and  questions  are  not  peculiar  to  Nebuchad- 
nezzar, but  they  are  the  common  lot  and  heritage  of 
humanity.  The}7  vary  in  their  subjects  and  times,  but 
we  have  them  always  on  hand.  We  live  just  now  in 
a  specially  doubting  age,  where  almost  every  matter 
of  feeling  is  openly  doubted,  or,  it  may  be,  openly  de- 
nied. Science  puts  every  thing  in  question,  and  liter- 
ature distils  the  questions,  making  an  atmosphere  of 
them.  We  doubt  both  creation  and  Creator;  whether 
there  be  second  causes  or  only  primal  causes  running 
ab  ceterno  in  ceternum  ;  whether  God  is  any  thing  more 
than  the  sum  of  such  causes  ;  whether  he  works  by  will 
back  of  such  causes  ;  whether  he  is  spirit  working  su- 
pernaturally  through  them  ;  whether  we  have  any  per- 
sonal relation  to  him,  or  he  to  us.  And  then,  when  we 
come  to  the  matter  of  revelation,  we  question  the  fact 
of  miracles  and  of  the  incarnation.  We  doubt  free 
agency  and  responsibility,  immortality  and  salvation, 
the  utility  of  prayer  and  worship,  and  even  of  repent- 
ance for  sin.  And  these  sweeping,  desolating  doubts 
(166) 


THE   DISSOLVING   OF   DOUBTS.  167 

run  through  all  grades  of  mind,  all  modes  and  spheres 
of  life,  as  it  were  telegraphically,  present  as  powers 
of  the  air  to  unchristen  the  new-born  thoughts  of  re- 
ligion as  fast  as  they  arrive.  The  cultivated  and  ma- 
ture have  the  doubts  ingrown  they  know  not  how,  and 
the  younger  minds  encounter  their  subtle  visitations 
when  they  do  not  seek  them.  And  the  more  active- 
minded  they  are,  and  the  more  thoughts  they  have  on 
the  subject  of  religion,  the  more  likely  they  are,  (un- 
less anchored  by  true  faith  in  God,)  to  be  drifted  away 
from  all  the  most  solid  and  serious  convictions,  even 
before  they  are  aware  of  it.  Their  mind  is  ingenuous, 
it  may  be,  and  their  habit  is  not  over-speculative,  cer- 
tainly not  perversely  speculative  ;  they  only  have  a 
great  many  thoughts  raising  a  great  many  questions 
that  fly,  as  it  were,  loosely  across  their  mental  land- 
scape, and  leave  no  trace  of  their  passage — that  is, 
none  which  they  themselves  perceive, — and  yet  they 
wake  up  by  and  by,  startled  by  the  discovery  that  they 
believe  nothing.  They  can  not  any  where  put  down 
their  foot  and  say,  "  here  is  truth."  And  it  is  the 
greatest  mystery  to  them  that  they  consciously  have 
not  meant  to  escape  from  the  truth,  but  have,  in  a  cer- 
tain sense,  been  feeling  after  it.  They  have  not  been 
ingenious  in  their  questions  and  arguments.  They 
have  despised  all  tricks  of  sophistry,  they  have  only 
been  thinking  and  questioning  as  it  seemed  to  be  quite 
right  they  should.  And  yet,  somehow,  it  is  now  be- 
come as  if  all  truth  were  gone  out,  and  night  and  no> 
where  had  the  world.     The  vacuity  is   painful,  and 


168  THE    DISSOLVING    OF    DOUBTS. 

they  are  turned  to  a  wrestling  with  their  doubts,  which 
is  only  the  more  painful  that  they  wrestle,  as  it  were, 
in  mid-air,  unable  to  so  much  as  touch  ground  any 
where. 

The  point  I  am  sketching  here  is  certainly  in  the 
extreme,  and  yet  it  is  an  extreme  often  reached  quite 
early,  and  one  toward  which  all  young  minds  grav- 
itate, as  certainly  as  they  consent  to  live  without  God 
and  carry  on  their  experience,  steadied  by  no  help  from 
the  practical  trust  of  religion.  Probably  some  of  you, 
my  friends  here  before  me,  are  at  one  point  of  doubt  or 
unbelieving,  and  some  at  another ;  I  sincerely  hope 
that  none  of  you  have  reached  the  dark  extreme  just 
described.  But  whatever  point  you  have  reached,  I 
propose  for  my  object  this  morning  to  bring  in  what  I 
can  of  countervailing  help.  I  shall  speak  of  the  dis- 
solving of  your  doubts,  showing  how  you  may  have 
them  dissolved  in  all  their  degrees  and  combinations. 
If  they  do  not  press  you,  or  at  all  trouble  you ;  if  you 
like  to  have  them,  and  amuse  yourself  in  what  you 
count  the  brilliancy  of  their  play,  if  you  love  to  be  in- 
ventive and  propagate  as  many  and  plausible  as  you 
may,  I  have  nothing  for  you.  But  if  you  want  to 
know  the  truth — all  truth — and  be  in  it,  and  have  all 
the  fogs  of  the  mind  cleared  away,  I  think  I  can  tell 
you  in  what  manner  it  may,  without  a  peradventure, 
be  done.  Shall  I  go  on  ?  Give  me  then  your  atten- 
tion, nothing  more.  I  shall  not  ask  you  to  surrender 
up  your  will  or  suppress  your  intelligence,  would  not 
even  consent  to  have  you  force  your  convictions  or. 


THE   DISSOLVING   OF   DOUBTS.  169 

opinions.  All  that  I  ask  is  a  real  desire  to  find  the 
truth  and  be  in  it. 

Before  proceeding,  however,  in  the  principal  matter 
of  the  subject,  it  may  be  well  to  just  note  the  three 
principal  sources  and  causes  whence  our  doubts  arise, 
and  from  which  they  get  force  to  make  their  assault. 
They  never  come  of  truth  or  high  discovery,  but  al- 
ways of  the  want  of  it. 

In  the  first  place,  all  the  truths  of  religion  are  inhe- 
rently dubitable.  They  are  only  what  are  called  prob- 
able, never  necessary  truths  like  the  truths  of  geome- 
try or  of  numbers.  In  these  we  have  the  premises  in 
our  very  minds  themselves.  In  all  other  matters  we 
have  the  premise  to  find.  And  there  is  almost  no 
premise  out  of  us  that  we  do  not  some  time  or  other 
doubt.  We  even  doubt  our  senses,  nay,  it  takes  a  very 
dull,  loose-minded  soul,  never  to  have,  or  to  have  had 
a  doubt  of  the  senses.  Now  this  field  of  probable  truth 
is  the  whole  field  of  religion,  and  of  course  it  is 
competent  for  doubt  to  cover  it  in  every  part  and 
item. 

In  the  second  place,  we  begin  life  as  unknowing 
creatures  that  have  every  thing  to  learn.  We  grope, 
and  groping  is  doubt ;  we  handle,  we  question,  we 
guess,  we  experiment,  beginning  in  darkness  and 
stumbling;  on  towards  intelligence.  We  are  in  a  doom 
of  activity,  and  can  not  stop  thinking — thinking  every 
thing,  knocking  against  the  walls  on  every  side  ;  trying 
thus  to  master  the  problems,  and  about  as  often  getting 
mastered  by  them.  Yeast  works  in  bread  scarcely 
15 


170  THE   DISSOLVING    OF   DOUBTS. 

more  blindly.  When  I  draw  out  this  whole  conception 
of  our  life  as  it  is,  the  principal  wonder,  I  confess,  is 
that  we  doubt  so  little  and  accept  so  much. 

And,  again,  thirdly,  it  is  a  fact,  disguise  it  as  we  can, 
or  deny  it  as  we  may,  that  our  faculty  is  iteelf  in  dis- 
order. A  broken  or  bent  telescope  will  not  see  any 
thing  rightly.  A  filthy  window  will  not  bring  in  even 
the  day  as  it  is.  So  a  mind  wrenched  from  its  true 
lines  of  action  or  straight  perception,  discolored  and 
smirched  by  evil,  will  not  see  truly,  but  will  put  a 
blurred,  misshapen  look  on  every  thing.  Truths  wrill 
only  be  as  good  as  errors,  and  doubts  as  natural  as 
they. 

Now  it  will  be  seen  that  as  long  as  these  three 
sources  or  originating  causes  of  doubt  continue,  doubts 
will  continue,  and  will,  in  one  form  or  another,  be  mul- 
tiplied. Therefore,  I  did  not  propose  to  show  how 
they  may  be  stopped,  for  that  is  impossible,  but  only 
how  they  may  be  dissolved,  or  cleared  away.  I  may 
add,  however,  that  the  method  by  which  they  are  to  be 
dissolved,  will  work  as  well  preventively  as  remedially  ; 
for  though  it  will  not  stop  their  coming,  it  will  stop 
their  coming  with  damage  and  trouble  to  the  mind, 
and  keep  it  clear  for  all  steadiest  repose  and  highest 
faith  in  religion. 

And  the  first  thing  here  to  be  said,  and  it  may  be 
most  important,  is  negative  ;  viz.,  that  the  doubters 
never  can  dissolve  or  extirpate  their  doubts  by  inqui- 
ry,  search,  investigation,  or  any  kind  of  speculative  en- 
deavor.    They  must  never  go  after  the  truth  to  merely 


THE    DISSOLVING   OF    DOUBTS.  171 

find  it,  but  to  practice  it  and  live  by  it.  It  is  not 
enough  to  rally  their  inventiveness,  doing  nothing  to 
polarize  their  aim.  To  be  simply  curious,  thinking  of 
this  and  thinking  of  that,  is  only  a  way  to  multiply 
doubts  ;  for  in  doing  it  they  are,  in  fact,  postponing  all 
the  practical  rights  of  truth.  They  imagine,  it  may. 
be,  that  they  are  going  first,  to  settle  their  questions, 
and  then,  at  their  leisure,  to  act.  As  if  they  were  go- 
ing to  get  the  perfect  system  and  complete  knowledge 
of  truth  before  they  move  an  inch  in  doing  what  they 
know  !  The  result  is  that  the  chamber  of  their  brain 
is  filled  with  an  immense  clatter  of  opinions,  questions, 
arguments,  that  even  confound  their  reason  itself. 
And  they  come  out  wondering  at  the  discovery,  that 
the  more  they  investigate  the  less  they  believe !  Their 
very  endeavor  mocks  them, — just  as  it  really  ought. 
For  truth  is  something  to  be  lived,  else  it  might  as  well 
not  be.  And  how  shall  a  mind  get  on  finding  more 
truth,  save  as  it  takes  direction  from  what  it  gets  ;  how 
make  farther  advances  when  it  tramples  what  it  has 
by  neglect  ?  You  come  upon  the  hither  side  of  a  vast 
intricate  forest  region,  and  your  problem  is  to  find  your 
way  through  it.  AVill  you  stand  there  inquiring  and 
speculating  forty  years,  expecting  first  to  make  out 
the  way  ?  or,  seeing  a  few  rods  into  it,  will  you  go  on 
as  far  as  you  see,  and  so  get  ability  to  see  a  few  rods 
farther  ?  proceeding  in  that  manner  to  find  out  the  un- 
known, by  advancing  practically  in  the  known. 

No,  there  is  no  fit  search  after  truth  which  does  not, 
first  of  all,  begin  to  live  the  truth  it  knows.     Alas ! 


172  THE    DISSOLVING   OF   DOUBTS. 

to  honor  a  little  truth  is  not  in  the  doubters,  or  they  do 
not  think  of  it,  and  so  they  dishonor  beforehand  all  the 
truth  they  seek,  and  swamp  it,  by  inevitable  conse- 
quence, in  doubts  without  end. 

Dropping  now  this  negative  matter,  we  come  to  the 
positive.     There  is  a  way  for  dissolving  any  and  all 
doubts,— a  way  that  opens  at  a  very  small  gate,  but 
widens  wonderfully  after  you  pass.    Every  human  soul, 
at  a  certain  first  point  of  its  religious  outfit,  has  a  key 
given  it  which  is  to  be  the  open  sesame  of  all  right  dis- 
covery.    Using  this  key  as  it  may  be  used,  any  lock  is 
opened,  any  doubt  dissolved.    Thus  every  man  acknowl- 
edges the  distinction  of  right  and  wrong,  feels  the  real- 
ity of  that  distinction,  knows  it  by  immediate  con 
sciousness  even  as  he  knows  himself.     He  would  not 
be  a  man  without  that  distinction.     It  is  even   this 
which  distinguishes  him  from  the  mere  animals.    Hav 
ing  it  taken  away,  he  would,  at  the  same  instant,  drop 
into  an  animal.     I  do  not  say,  observe,  that  every  man 
is  clear  as  to  what  particular  things  may  be  fitly  called 
risht  and  what  wrong.     There  is  a  great  disagreement 
here  in  men's  notions  ;    what  is  right  to  some,  or  in 
some  ages  and  some  parts  of  the  world,  being  wrong  to 
others,  in  other  times  and  countries.     I  only  say  that 
the  distinction  of  idea  or  general  principle  is  the  same  in 
all  ages  and  peoples,  without  a  shade  of  difference 
Their  ideas  of  space  and  time  are  not  more  perfectly 
identical.     So  far  they  are  all  in  the  same  great  law ; 
constituted,  in  that  fact,  men,  moral  beings,  subjects 
of  religion.     Their  whole  nature  quivers  responsively 


THE    DISSOLVING   OF   DOUBTS.  173 

to  this  law.  To  be  in  the  right,  and  of  it,  to  mean  the 
right,  and  swear  allegiance  to  it  forever,  regardless  of 
cost,  even  though  it  be  the  cost  of  life  itself, — they  can 
as  well  disown  their  existence  as  disown  this  law. 
There  may  be  now  and  then  a  man  who  contrives  to 
raise  a  donbt  of  it,  and  yet,  driven  out  with  rods,  it 
will  come  back,  a  hundred  times  a  day,  and  force 
its  recognition ;  especially  if  any  one  does  him  a 
wrong. 

Here,  then,  is  the  key  that  opens  every  thing.  And 
the  only  reason  why  we  fall  into  so  many  doubts,  and 
get  unsettled  by  our  inquiries,  instead  of  being  settled 
by  them  as  we  undertake  to  be,  is  that  we  do  not  be- 
gin at  the  beginning.  Of  what  use  can  it  be  for  a  man 
to  push  on  his  inquiries  after  truth,  when  he  throws 
away,  or  does  not  practically  honor,  the  most  funda- 
mental and  most  determinating  of  all  truths?  He  goes 
after  truth  as  if  it  were  coining  in  to  be  with  him  in 
wrong !  even  as  a  thief  might  be  going  after  honest 
company  in  stolen  garments.  How  can  a  soul,  unpo- 
larized  by  wrong,  as  a  needle  by  heat,  settle  itself  in 
the  poles  of  truth  ?  or  who  will  expect  a  needle,  hung 
in  a  box  of  iron,  turning  every  way  and  doubting  at 
every  point  of  compass,  to  find  the  true  North  ?  But 
a  right  mind  has  a  right  polarity,  and  discovers  right 
things  by  feeling  after  them.  Not  all  right  things  in 
a  moment,  though,  potentially,  all  in  a  moment;  for  its 
very  oscillations  are  true,  feeling  after  only  that  which 
is,  to  know  it  as  it  is. 

The  true  way,  therefore,  of  dissolving  doubts,  as  I 
15* 


174  THE    DISSOLVING    OF   DOUBTS. 

just  now  said,  is  to  begin  at  the  beginning,  and  do  the 
first  thing  first.  Say  nothing  of  investigation,  till  you 
have  made  sure  of  being  grounded  everlastingly,  and 
with  a  completely  whole  intent,  in  the  principle  of 
right  doing  as  a  principle.  And  here  it  is,  let  me  say, 
that  all  unreligious  men  are  at  fault,  and  often  without 
knowing,  or  even  suspecting  it.  They  do  right  things 
enough  in  the  out-door,  market  sense  of  the  term,  and 
count  that  being  right.  But  let  them  ask  the  ques- 
tion, "  Have  I  ever  consented  to  be,  and  am  I  really 
now,  in  the  right,  as  in  principle  and  supreme  law ;  to 
live  for  it,  to  make  any  sacrifice  it  will  cost  me,  to  be- 
lieve every  thing  it  will  bring  me  to  see,  to  be  a  confess- 
or of  Christ  as  soon  as  it  appears  to  be  enjoined  upon 
me,  to  go  on  a  mission  to  the  world's  end,  if  due  con- 
viction sends  me,  to  change  my  occupation  for  good 
conscience'  sake,  to  repair  whatever  wrong  I  have 
done  to  another,  to  be  humbled,  if  I  should  before  my 
worst  enemy,  to  do  complete  justice  to  God,  and,  if  I 
could,  to  all  worlds  ? — in  a  word,  to  be  in  wholly  right 
intent,  and  have  no  mind  but  this  forever?"  Ah,  how 
soon  do  they  discover  possibly,  in  this  manner,  that 
they  are  right  only  so  far  as  they  can  be,  and  not  be  at 
all  right  as  in  principle — right  as  doing  some  right 
things,  nothing  more.  Of  course,  they  are  not  going 
to  be  martyrs  in  this  way,  and  they  have  not  had  a 
thought  of  it. 

After  this  there  is  not  much  use  in  looking  farther, 
for  if  we  can  not  settle  ourselves  practically  in  this 
grand  first  law  which  we  do  know,  how  can  we  hope 


THE   DISSOLVING    OF    DOUBTS.  175 

to  be  settled  in  what  of  truth  we  do  not  ?  Are  we 
ready,  then,  to  undertake  a  matter  so  heavy  ?  for  the 
struggle  it  requires  will  be  great,  as  the  change  itself 
must  be  well  nigh  total ;  a  revolution  so  nearly  com- 
plete, that  we  shall  want  every  help  we  can  get.  And 
let  us  not  be  surprised  by  the  suggestion  that  God, 
perchance,  may  come  to  our  help  unseen,  when  we  do 
not  so  much  as  know  how  to  believe  in  him,  only 
let  it  occur  to  us  how  great  a  comfort  it  should 
be,  to  have  a  God  so  profoundly  given  to  the  right; 
for  that  subtle  gleam  of  sympathy  may  be  itself  a 
kind  of  prayer, — prayer  that  he  will  answer  before 
the  call  is  heard.  And  then,  as  certainly  as  the 
new  right  mind  begins,  it  will  be  as  if  the  whole 
heaven  were  bursting  out  in  day.  For  this  is  what 
Christ  calls  the  single  eye,  and  the  whole  body  is  inev- 
itably full  of  light.  How  surely  and  how  fast  fly  away 
the  doubts,  even  as  fogs  are  burned  away  by  the  sun. 

Now  to  make  this  matter  plain,  I  will  suppose  a  case 
in  which  the  dissolving  of  doubt  in  this  manner  is  illus- 
trated. Suppose  that  one  of  us,  clear  all  the  vices, 
having  a  naturally  active-minded,  inquiring  habit,  oc- 
cupied largely  with  thoughts  of  religion, — never  mean- 
ing to  get  away  from  the  truth,  but,  as  he  thinks,  to 
find  it,  only  resolved  to  have  a  free  mind,  and  not  al- 
low himself  to  be  carried  by  force  or  fear  or  any  thing 
but  real  conviction, — suppose  that  such  a  one  going  on 
thus,  year  by  year,  reading,  questioning,  hearing  all  the 
while  the  gospel  in  which  he  has  been  educated,  some- 
times impressed  by  it,  but  relapsing  shortly  into  greater 


176  THE   DISSOLVING   OF   DOUBTS. 

doubt  than  before,  finds  Lis  religious  beliefs  wearing 
out,  and  vanishing,  he  knows  not  how,  till  finally  he 
seems  to  really  believe  nothing.  He  has  not  meant  to 
be  an  atheist,  but  he  is  astonished  to  find  that  he  has 
nearly  lost  the  conviction  of  God,  and  can  not,  if  he 
would,  say  with  any  emphasis  of  conviction  that  God 
exists.  The  world  looks  blank,  and  he  feels  that  exist- 
ence is  getting  blank  also  to  itself.  This  heavy  charge 
of  his  possibly  immortal  being  oppresses  him,  and  he 
asks  again  and  again,  "  What  shall  I  do  with  itf  His 
hunger  is  complete,  and  his  soul  turns  every  way  for 
bread.  His  friends  do  not  satisfy  him.  His  walks  drag 
heavily.  His  suns  do  not  rise,  but  only  climb.  A  kind 
of  leaden  aspect  overhangs  the  world.  Till  finally, 
pacing  his  chamber  some  day,  there  comes  up  suddenly 
the  question, — "  Is  there,  then,  no  truth  that  I  do  be- 
lieve ? — Yes,  there  is  this  one,  now  that  I  think  of  it, 
there  is  a  distinction  of  right  and  wrong,  that  I  never 
doubted,  and  I  see  not  how  I  can ;  I  am  even  quite  sure 
of  it."  Then,  forthwith,  starts  up  the  question,  "  Have 
I,  then,  ever  taken  the  principle  of  right  for  my  law  ? 
I  have  done  right  things  as  men  speak,  have  I  ever 
thrown  my  life  out  on  the  principle  to  become  all  it  re- 
quires of  me  ?  No,  I  have  not,  consciously  I  have 
not.  Ah  !  then  here  is  something  for  me  to  do  !  No 
matter  what  becomes  of  my  questions, — nothing  ought 
to  become  of  them,  if  I  can  not  take  a  first  principle  so 
inevitably  true  and  live  in  it."  The  very  suggestion 
seems  to  be  a  kind  of  revelation ;  it  is  even  a  relief  to 
feel  the  conviction  it  brings.     "  Here,  then,"  he  says, 


THE   DISSOLVING    OF   DOUBTS.  177 

"will  I  begin.  If  there  is  a  God.  as  I  rather  hope 
there  is,  and  very  dimly  believe,  he  is  a  right  God.  If 
I  have  lost  him  in  wrong,  perhaps  I  shall  find  hi  in  in 
right.  Will  he  not  help  me,  or,  perchance,  even  be  dis- 
covered to  me  V  Now  the  decisive  moment  is  come. 
He  drops  on  his  knees,  and  there  he  prays  to  the  dim 
God  dimly  felt,  confessing  the  dimness  for  honesty's 
sake,  and  asking  for  help,  that  he  may  begin  a  right 
life.  He  bows  himself  on  it  as  he  prays,  choos- 
ing it  to  be  henceforth  his  unalterable,  eternal  en- 
deavor. 

It  is  an  awfully  dark  prayer,  in  the  look  of  it,  but 
the  truest  and  best  he  can  make, — the  better  and 
more  true  that  he  puts  no  orthodox  colors  on  it ;  and 
the  prayer  and  the  vow  are  so  profoundly  meant  that 
his  soul  is  borne  up  into  God's  help,  as  it  were  by  some 
unseen  chariot,  and  permitted  to  see  the  opening  of 
heaven  even  sooner  than  he  opens  his  eyes.  He  rises 
and  it  is  as  if  he  had  gotten  wings.  The  whole  sky  is 
luminous  about  him, — it  is  the  morning,  as  it  were,  of 
a  new  eternity.  After  this,  all  troublesome  doubt  of 
God's  reality  is  gone,  for  he  has  found  Him  !  A  being 
so  profoundly  felt,  must  inevitably  be. 

Now  this  conversion,  calling  it  by  that  name,  as  we 
properly  should,  may  seem,  in  the  apprehension  of 
some,  to  be  a  conversion  for  the  gospel  and  not  in  it  or 
by  it ;  a  conversion  by  the  want  of  truth,  more  than 
by  the  power  of  truth.  But  that  will  be  a  judgment 
more  superficial  than  the  facts  permit.  No,  it  is  ex- 
actly this :  it  is  seeking  first  the  kingdom  of  God,  and 


178  THE   DISSOLVING   OF   DOUBTS. 

his  righteousness, — exactly  that  and  nothing  less.  And 
the  dimly  groping  cry  for  help — what  is  that  but  a  feel- 
ing after  God,  if  haply  it  may  find  him,  and  actually 
finding  him  not  far  off.  And  what  is  the  help  obtain- 
ed, but  exactly  the  true  Christ-help?  And  the  result 
— what  also  is  that,  but  the  Kingdom  of  God  within  ; 
righteousness,  and  peace,  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost  ? 

[There  is  a  story  lodged  in  the  little  bedroom  of 
one  of  these  dormitories,  which,  I  pray  God,  his  re- 
cording angel  may  note,  allowing  it  never  to  be  lost.]* 

Now  the  result  will  be  that  a  soul  thus  won  to  its 
integrity  of  thought  and  meaning,  will  rapidly  clear 
all  tormenting  questions  and  difficulties.  They  are  not 
all  gone,  but  they  are  going.  Revelation,  it  may  be, 
opens  some  troublesome  chapters.  Preaching  some- 
times stumbles  the  neophyte,  when  he  might  better 
be  comforted  by  it.  The  great  truths  of  God  often 
put  him  in  a  maze.  The  creation  story,  the  miracles, 
the  incarnation,  the  trinity,  the  relations  of  justice  and 
mercy, — in  all  these  he  may  only  see,  for  a  time,  men 
walking  that  have  the  look  of  trees.  But  the  ship  is 
launched,  he  is  gone  to  sea,  and  has  the  needle  on 
board.  He  is  going  now  to  sell  every  thing  for  the  truth, 
— not  the  truth  to  keep  as  a  knowledge,  but  the  truth 
to  live  by.  He  is  going  henceforth  to  be  concentered 
in  the  right,  nay,  the  righteousness  itself  of  God  ;  and 
his  prayers  he  will  be  hanging,   O  how  tenderly,  on 

*T.  C.  C. 


: 


THE   DISSOLVING   OF   DOUBTS.  179 

God,  for  the  inward  guidance  of  his  Spirit.  He  will 
undertake  shortly  some  point  that  is  not  cleared  at 
once  by  the  daylight  of  his  new  experience,  and  will, 
by  and  by,  master  it.  That  will  give  him  courage  to 
undertake  shortly  another,  and  he  will  go  to  it  with 
new  appetite.  And  so  lie  will  go  on,  not  afraid  to 
have  questions  even  to  the  end  of  his  life,  and  will  be 
nowise  disturbed  by  them.  He  will  be  in  the  gospel  as 
an  honest  man,  and  will  have  it  as  a  world  of  wonder- 
fully grand,  perpetually  fresh  discovery.  He  comes 
now  to  the  lock  with  the  key  that  opens  it  in  his  hand, 
fumbling  no  more  in  doubt,  unresolved,  because  he  has 
no  key. 

The  menstruum,  then,  by  which  all  doubts  may  be 
dissolved,  appears  to  be  sufficiently  shown  or  provided. 
It  only  remains  to  add  a  few  more  promiscuous  points 
of  advice  that  relate  to  the  general  conduct  of  the 
mind  in  its  new  conditions. 

1.  Be  never  afraid  of  doubt.  Perhaps  a  perfectly 
upright  angelic  mind  well  enough  might,  though  I  am 
not  sure  even  of  that.  We,  at  least,  are  in  the  fog 
eternal  of  wrong,  and  there  is  no  way  for  us  to  get 
clear  but  to  prove  all  things  and  hold  fast.  Make  free 
use  of  all  the  intelligence  God  has  given  you,  only  tak- 
ing care  to  use  it  in  a  consciously  supreme  allegiance 
to  right  and  to  God.  Your  questions  then  will  only 
be  your  helpers,  and  the  faster  they  come,  the  better 
will  be  your  progress  in  the  truth. 

2.  Be  afraid  of  all  sophistries,  and  tricks,  and  strifes 


180  THE    DISSOLVING    OF    DOUBTS. 

of  disingenuous  argument.  Dotiug  about  question?, 
and  doubting  about  them  are  very  different  things. 
Any  kind  of  cunning  art  or  dodge  of  stratagem  in  your 
words  and  arguments  will  do  you  incalculable  mischief. 
They  will  damage  the  sense  of  truth,  which  is  the  worst 
possible  kind  of  damage.  False  arguments  make  the 
soul  itself  false,  and  then  a  false,  uncandid  soul  can  see 
nothing  as  it  is.  No  man  can  fitly  seek  after  truth 
who  does  not  hold  truth  in  the  deepest  reverence. 
Truth  must  be  sacred  even  as  God,  else  it  is  nothing. 

3.  Have  it  as  a  fixed  principle  also,  that  getting  into 
any  scornful  way  is  fatal.  Scorn  is  dark,  and  has  no 
eyes  ;  for  the  eyes  it  thinks  it  has  are  only  sockets  in  the 
place  of  eyes.  Doubt  is  reason,  scorn  is  disease.  One 
simply  questions,  searching  after  evidence  ;  the  other 
has  got  above  evidence,  and  turns  to  mockery  the  mod- 
est way  that  seeks  it.  Even  if  truth  were  found,  it  could 
not  stay  in  any  scorning  man's  bosom.  The  tearing 
voice,  the  scowling  brow,  the  leer,  the  sneer,  the  jeer, 
would  make  the  place  a  robber's  cave  to  it,  and  drive 
the  delicate  and  tender  guest  to  make  his  escape  at  the 
first  opportunity.  There  was  never  a  scorner  that 
gave  good  welcome  to  truth.  Knaves  can  as  well 
harbor  honesty,  and  harlots  chastity,  as  scorners 
truth. 

4.  Never  settle  upon  any  thing  as  true,  because  it  is 
safer  to  hold  it  than  not.  I  will  not  say  that  any  one 
is  to  have  it  as  a  point  of  duty  to  be  damned,  or  will- 
ing to  be,  for  the  truth.  I  only  say  that  truth  brings 
often  great  liabilities  of  cost,  and  we  must  choose  it, 


THE   DISSOLVING    OF   DOUBTS.  181 

cost  what  it  will.  To  accept  the  Bible  even  because  it 
is  safest,  as  some  persons  do,  and  some  ministers  very 
lightly  preach,  is  to  do  the  greatest  dishonor  both  to  it 
and  to  the  soul.  Such  faith  is  cowardly,  and  is  even  a 
lie  besides.  It  is  basing  a  religion,  not  in  truth, 
but  in  the  doctrine  of  chances,  and  reducing  the  salva- 
tion of  God  to  a  bill  of  insurance.  If  the  Bible  is 
true,  believe  it,  but  do  not  mock  it  by  assuming  for  a 
creed  the  mere  chance  that  it  may  be.  For  the  same 
reason,  take  religion,  not  because  it  will  be  good  for 
your  family,  or  good  for  the  state,  but  because  it  is  the 
homage  due  inherently  from  man  to  God  and  the  king- 
dom of  God.  What  more  flashy  conceit  can  there  be, 
than  a  religion  accepted  as  a  domestic  or  political  nos- 
trum ? 

5.  Have  it  as  a  law  never  to  put  force  on  the  mind, 
or  try  to  make  it  believe ;  because  it  spoils  the  mind's 
integrity,  and  when  that  is  gone,  what  power  of  ad- 
vance in  the  truth  is  left  ?  I  know  very  well  that 
the  mind's  integrity  is  far  enough  gone  already, 
and  that  all  our  doubts  and  perpetual  self-defeats 
come  upon  us  for  just  that  reason.  All  the  more 
necessary  is  it  that  we  come  into  what  integrity  we 
can,  and  stay  there.  Let  the  soul  be  immovable  as 
rock,  by  any  threat  of  danger,  any  feeling  of  risk,  any 
mere  scruple,  any  call  to  believe  by  sheer,  self-compel- 
ing  will.  The  soul  that  is  anchored  in  right  will  do  no 
such  thing.  There  must,  of  course,  be  no  obstinacy, 
no  stiff  holding  out  after  conviction  has  come.  There 
must  be  tenderness,  docility,  and,  with  these,  a  most 
16 


182  THE    DISSOLVING   OF   DOUBTS. 

firmly  kept  equilibrium.  There  must  be  no  gustiness 
of  pride  or  self-will  to  fog  the  mind  and  keep  right 
conviction  away. 

6.  Never  be  in  a  hurry  to  believe,  never  try  to  con- 
quer doubts  against  time.  Time  is  one  of  the  grand 
elements  in  thought  as  truly  as  in  motion.  If  you  can 
not  open  a  doubt  to-day,  keep  it  till  to-morrow ;  do  not 
be  afraid  to  keep  it  for  whole  years.  One  of  the 
greatest  talents  in  religious  discovery,  is  the  finding 
how  to  hang  up  questions  and  let  them  hang  without 
being  at  all  anxious  about  them.  Turn  a  free  glance 
on  them  now  and  then  as  they  hang,  move  freely 
about  them,  and  see  them,  first  on  one  side,  and  then 
on  another,  and  by  and  by  when  you  turn  some  corner 
of  thought,  you  will  be  delighted  and  astonished  to  see 
how  quietly  and  easily  they  open  their  secret  and  let 
you  in !  What  seemed  perfectly  insoluble  will  clear  it- 
self in  a  wondrous  revelation.  It  will  not  hurt  you, 
nor  hurt  the  truth,  if  you  should  have  some  few  ques- 
tions left  to  be  carried  on  with  you  when  you  go  hence, 
for  in  that  more  luminous  state,  most  likely,  they 
will  soon  be  cleared, — only  a  thousand  others  will  be 
springing  up  even  there,  and  you  will  go  on  dissolving 
still  your  new  sets  of  questions,  and  growing  mightier 
and  more  deep-seeing  for  eternal  ages. 

]STow,  my  friends,  it  would  not  be  strange  if  I  had  in 
the  audience  before  me  all  sorts  of  doubts,  and  varie- 
ties of  questions,  all  grades  of  incipient  unbelief,  or,  it 
may  be,  of  unbelief  not  incipient,  but  ripe  and  in  full 
seed.     But  I  have  one  and  the  same  word  for  you  all, 


THE   DISSOLVING  OF   DOUBTS.  183 

that  is,  look  after  the  day,  and  the  night  itself  will  join 
you  in  it.  Or,  better  still,  set  your  clock  by  the  sun  ; 
then  it  will  be  right  all  day,  and  even  all  night  besides, 
and  be  ready  when  he  rises,  pointing  its  finger  to  the 
exact  minute  where  he  stands,  in  the  circle  of  his 
swift  motion.  Be  right,  that  is,  hrst  of  all,  in  what 
you  know,  and  your  soul  will  be  faithfully  chiming 
with  all  you  ought  to  know.  All  evidences  are  with 
you  then,  and  you  with  them.  Even  if  they  seem  to  be 
hid,  they  will  shortly  appear,  and  bring  you  their 
light.  But  this  being  right  implies  a  great  deal,  ob- 
serve, and  especially  these  two  things  : — First,  that 
you  pray  for  all  the  help  you  can  get ;  for  without  this 
you  can  not  believe,  or  feel,  that  you  truly  want  to  be 
right.  Secondly,  that  you  consent,  in  advance,  to  be  a 
Christian,  and  begin  a  religious  life,  fulfilling  all  the 
sacrifices  of  such  a  life,  provided  you  may  find  it  nec- 
essary to  do  so,  in  order  to  carry  out  and  justify  your- 
self in  acting  up  to  the  principle  you  have  accepted. 
Undertaking  to  be  right,  only  resolving  not  to  be  a 
Christian,  is  but  a  mockery  of  right.  You  must  go 
where  it  carries  you.  You  must  even  be  a  Mahom- 
etan, a  Jew,  a  Pagan, — any  thing  to  have  a  clear  con- 
science. There  is  no  likelihood,  it  is  true,  that  you 
will  have  to  be  either  of  these,  but  there  is  an  almost 
certainty  that  you  must  be  a  christian.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  you  must  consent  to  go  where  right  conviction 
carries  you.  And  there  is  even  some  proper  doubt 
whether  you  can  get  out  of  this  place  of  worship  with- 
out being  carried  to  Christ,  if  you  undertake  to  go  out 


184  THE    DISSOLVING    OF   DOUBTS. 

as  a  thoroughly  right  man.  For  Christ  is  but  the  Sun 
of  Righteousness,  and  you  will  assuredly  find  that,  in 
being  joined  to  the  Right,  you  are  joined  eternally  to 
him,  and  walking  with  him  in  the  blessed  daylight  of 
his  truth. 


X. 

CHRIST  REGENERATES  EVEN  THE  DESIRES. 


"  And  James  and  John,  the  sons  of  Zebedee,  came  unto  him, 
saying,  Master,  we  would  that  thou  shouldest  do  for  us  whatsoever 
we  shall  desire." — Mark  10 :    35. 

Had  Christ  ever  been  willing  to  indulge  in  satire,  I 
think  he  would  have  done  it  here.  These  young  gen- j 
tlemen  make  a  request  so  large,  and  withal  so  very  ab- 
surd, that  we  at  least  can  scarcely  restrain  a  smile  at 
their  expense.  "  Whatsoever  we  desire,"  —  what 
power  in  the  creation  could  give  it?  And  then  it 
would  be  strange,  above  all,  if  they  themselves  could 
endure, the  gift.  Still  the  Saviour  hears  them  kindly 
and  considerately,  only  showing  them,  when  they 
come  to  state  the  particular  thing  they  want,  that 
even  that  thing — the  sitting  on  his  right  and  left — ■ 
means  perhaps  a  good  deal  more  than  they  imagine; 
viz.,  that  they  drink  of  his  bitter  cup  and  be  bap- 
tized with  his  fiery  baptism.  And  when  he  finds  them 
eager  enough  to  answer  still  that  they  can  do  even 
that,  he  only  turns  them  off  in  the  gentlest  manner, 
as  children  that  he  sees  are  looking  after  a  toy  which 
it  would  cost  them  a  tragedy  of  suffering  to  accept.  I 
think  we  can  see,  too,  in  his  manner,  that  he  regards 
16*  (185) 


186  CHRIST   REGENERATES 

them  with  a  pity  so  considerate,  simply  because  the 
absurdity  they  are  in  is  nothing  but  the  common  ab- 
surdity of  the  whole  living  world.  For  what  are  we 
all  saying,  young  and  old,  the  young  more  eagerly, 
the  old  more  indivertibly,  but  exactly  what  amounts 
to  the  same  thing,  under  one  form  of  language  or 
another — "  Let  us  have  this,  that,  the  other,  any 
thing  and  every  thing  we  desire."  Sometimes,  if  we 
could  see  it,  we  are  really  saying  it  in  our  prayers  ; 
though  if  we  should  pause  long  enough  upon  the  mat- 
ter to  let  our  apprehension  run  a  little  way,  I  think 
we  should  almost  any  one  of  us  begin  to  suspect  that, 
having  his  particular  desire,  he  might  sometimes  have 
more  than  he  could  bear,  and  might  perfectly  know 
that,  if  all  of  us  could  have  it,  we  should  make  the 
world  a  bedlam  of  confusion  without  even  a  chance 
of  order  and  harmony  left.  The  first  and  most  for- 
ward point  accordingly  which  meets  us  in  the  con- 
sideration of  this  subject,  is  that — 

Our  human  desire,  in  the  common  plane  of  nature  and 
the  world,  is  blind,  or  unintelligent — out  of  all  keeping  ivith 
our  real  wants  and  possibilities. 

I  mean  by  this,  that  we  are  commonly  desiring 
just  what  would  be  the  greatest  damage  to  us,  or  the 
misery  worst  to  be  suffered,  and  do  not  know  it ;  that 
our  tamest  desires  are  often  most  untamed  as  regards 
the  order  of  reason  ;  and  that  we  are  all  desiring  un- 
wittingly, what  is  exactly  contrary  to  God's  counsel, 
what  is  possible  never  to  be,  and  if  it  might,  would 


EVEN   THE    DESIRES.  187 

set  us  in  general  repugnance  with  each  other,  and  so- 
ciety itself. 

We  are  apt  to  imagine  that,  since  we  are  con- 
sciously heings  of  intelligence,  our  desires  must  of 
course  be  included,  and  be  themselves  intelligent  as 
we  are.  But  we  are  not  intelligent  beings  it  happens 
in  the  sense  here  supposed.  We  are  only  a  little  in- 
telligent, in  a  very  few  things,  and  we  do  not  mean 
by  claiming  this  title,  if  we  understand  ourselves, 
much  more  than  that  we  are  of  another  grade  in  com- 
parison with  the  animals — able  that  is  to  be  intelli- 
gent if  we  get  the  opportunity,  as  they  are  not.  We 
get  room  thus,  large  enough  for  the  fact  of  a  gen- 
eral state  of  unreason  in  our  desires.  After  all  they 
may  be  about  as  far  from  intelligence  as  they  can 
be — possibly  not  more  intelligent  than  our  pas- 
sions, appetites,  and  bodily  secretions  are.  In  one 
view  still,  they  are  motive  forces  of  endowment  for  in- 
telligent action,  instigators  of  energy,  purpose  and 
character,  and  if  we  knew  them  only  as  they  move  in 
their  law,  bound  up  in  the  original  sweet  harmony  of 
an  upright  state,  we  should  doubtless  see  them  work- 
ing instinctively  on  as  co-factors  with  intelligence,  if 
not  intelligent  themselves.  But,  in  their  present  wild 
way,  we  see  them  plainly  loosed  from  their  law  by 
transgression — heavings  all  and  foamings  of  the  in- 
ward tumult — aspiration,  soul-hunger,  hate,  ambition, 
pride,  passion,  lust  of  gain,  lust  of  power ;  and  what 
do  they  signify  more  visibly,  than  that  all  right  har- 
mony and  proportion  are  gone,  as  far  as  they  are  con- 


188  CHRIST   REGENERATES 

cerned.  Nothing  has  its  natural  value  before  them, 
because  they  are  reeking  themselves  in  all  kinds  of  dis- 
order bodily  and  mental.  They  are  phantoms  without 
perception.     Even  smoke  is  scarcely  less  intelligent. 

That  we  may  better  conceive  this  general  truth, 
revert,  first  of  all,  to  the  grounds  out  of  which  they 
get  their  spring.  They  do  not  come  after  reason  com- 
monly, asking  permission  of  reason,  but  they  begin 
their  instigations  from  a  fund  of  raw  lustings  in  the 
nature  clean  back  of  intelligence ;  rushing  out  as 
troops  in  a  certain  wildness  and  confused,  blind 
huddle,  that  allows  us  to  think  of  them  with  no  great 
respect.  Understanding  well  their  disorder  and  con- 
fusion, we  have  it  as  a  common  way  of  speaking  that 
reason  must  govern  them — which  supposes,  clearly, 
that  reason  is  not  in  them.  And  what  do  we  better 
know,  than  that  only  a  very  partial  government  of 
them  is  possible  ;  that  they  swarm  so  fast  and  fly  so 
far  and  wildly,  that  no  queen  bee  of  reason  can  possi- 
bly control  the  hive. 

The  next  thing  to  be  noted  is  that  they  have  no  re- 
spect to  possibilities  and  causes,  and  terms  of  moral 
award.  Thus  one  man  desires  dry  weather,  and  an- 
other rain,  one  office,  and  another  the  same  office,  one 
to  own  a  house,  another  the  same  house,  some  to  be 
honorable  without  character,  some  to  be  useful  with- 
out industry,  some  to  be  learned  without  study.  We 
desire  also  to  own  what  we  mortgage,  keep  what  we 
sell,  and  get  what  nobody  can  have.  "We  cypher  out 
gains  against  the  terms  of  arithmetic,  and  even  pray 


EVEN   THE   DESIRES.  189 

God  squarely  against  each  other.  We  run  riot  in  this 
manner  all  the  while,  even  against  possibilities  them- 
selves. A  child  crying  after  the  moon  is  in  the  same 
scale  of  intelligence. 

Causes  again  we  as  little  respect.  Having  it  as  a 
clear  test  of  insanity  to  be  reaching  after  what  every 
body  knows  eternal  causes  forbid,  we  are  yet  all  the 
while  doing  it.  We  want  our  clocks  to  move  a  great 
deal  faster  in  the  playtimes  appointed  for  childhood, 
and  a  great  deal  slower  in  the  payment  times  ap- 
pointed in  the  engagements  of  manhood.  We  want 
poor  soils  to  bear  great  crops,  indolence  to  be  thrifty, 
intemperance  to  be  healthy,  and  to  have  all  good  sup- 
plies come  in,  doing  nothing  to  earn  or  provide 
them. 

Against  all  terms  and  conditions  of  morality,  also, 
we  want  to  be  confided  in,  having  neither  truth  nor 
honesty.  We  desire  to  be  honored,  not  having  worth 
enough  even  to  be  respected.  We  want  the  comforts 
of  religion  without  religion,  asking  for  rewards  to 
come  without  duties,  and  that  evils  fly  away  which 
are  fastened  by  our  bad  deserts.  Of  course  our  judg* 
ment  goes  not  with  the  nonsense  there  may  be  in  such 
desires,  but  they  none  the  less  make  haste,  scorning  all 
detentions  of  judgment. 

We  get  also  another  kind  of  proof  in  this  matter, 
by  discovering  afterwards  how  absurd  our  desires 
have  been — that  the  marriage  we  sought  would  have 
kept  us  from  a  good  one,  and  would  have  been  itself 
a  bitter  woe ;  that  the  bad  weather  of  yesterday,  so 


190  CHRIST  REGENERATES 

much  against  our  patience,  kept  us  from  the  car  that 
was  wrecked,  or  the  steamer  that  was  sunk  by  an 
explosion ;  that  the  treachery  of  a  friend,  so  much  de- 
plored, saved  us  from  the  whirlpool  of  temptation  into 
which  we  were  plunging  ;  that  the  failure  of  an  ad- 
venture we  were  prosecuting  with  high  expectation, 
was  the  only  thing  that  could  have  sobered  our  feel- 
ing, and  prepared  us  to  a  penitent  life.  Sitting  down 
thus,  after  many  years,  and  looking  back  on  the  de- 
sires that  have  instigated  our  feeling,  we  discover  what 
a  smoke  of  delusion  was  in  them,  and  how  nearly  ab- 
surd they  were.  How  often  has  their  crossing  been 
our  benefit,  and  how  many  thousand  times  over  have 
we  seen  it  proved  by  experiment,  that  they  were  blind 
instigations,  thrusting  us  onward,  had  they  not  been 
mercifully  defeated,  on  results  of  unspeakable  dis- 
aster. 

There  is  yet  another  fact  concerning  them  which 
has  only  been  adverted  to,  and  requires  to  be  more 
formally  stated  ;  viz.,  that  they  are  not  only  blind  or 
wild,  as  I  have  been  saying,  but  are  also  a  great  part 
of  them  morally  bad,  or  wicked;  reeking  with  self- 
ishness, fouled  by  lust,  bittered  and  soured  by  envies, 
jealousies,  resentments,  revenges,  wounded  pride,  mor- 
tified littleness.  Thus  it  was  that  even  Goethe,  no 
very  staunch  confessor  of  orthodoxy,  was  constrained 
to  say — "  There  is  something  in  every  man's  heart, 
which  if  we  could  know,  would  make  us  hate  him." 
And  why  not  also  make  him  hate  himself?  Hateful  is 
the  only  fit  epithet  for  this  murky-looking  crew,  that 


EVEN   THE    DESIRES.  191 

are  always  breaking  into  the  mind,  and  hovering  in 
among  its  best  thoughts.  Who  that  is  not  insane  can 
think  it  possible  to  set  them  in  right  order,  and  tame 
them  by  his  mere  will? 

What  then,  is  there  no  possibility  but  to  be  driven 
wild,  and  hag-ridden  always  by  these  phantoms  %  I 
think  there  is,  and  I  shall  now  undertake,  for  a  second 
stage  in  my  subject,  to  show 

That  Christ  new-molds  the  desires  in  their  spring,  and 
configures  them  inwardly  to  God ;  regenerating  the  soul  at 
this  deepest  and  most  hidden  point  of  character. 

We  commonly  speak  of  a  new-creating  grace  for 
souls,  in  the  matter  of  principle,  will,  the  affections, 
and  we  magnify  our  gospel  in  the  fact  that  it  can 
undertake  a  work  so  nearly  central.  I  think  it  can 
do  more,  that  it  can  even  go  through  into  what  is 
background,  down  into  substructure,  where  the  im- 
pulsions of  desire  begin  to  move  unasked,  and,  by 
their  own  self-instigation,  stir  on  all  the  disorders  of 
the  will  and  the  heart ;  that  it  can  go  through,  I  say, 
and  down  among  them,  reducing  them  to  law,  and 
setting  them  in  harmony  with  God  as  they  rise. 

I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  we  are  put  on  this  work 
of  reduction  ourselves,  under  the  divine  helps  given 
us.  Thus  it  may  be  conceived  that  we  are  only  now 
to  undertake,  ourselves,  more  hopefully  the  govern- 
ment of  our  desires.  But  this  matter  of  government 
begins  too  late,  for  it  supposes  that  the  desires  to  be 
governed,  at  any  given  time,  are  already  broken  loos© 


192  CHKIST   REGENERATES 

in  their  rampages,  so  that  if,  by  due  campaigning,  we 
should  get  them  under,  there  will  always  be  new  ones, 
not  less  wild,  coming  after.  Betides,  we  do  not  see 
far  enough  to  govern  them  understandingly,  or  in  any 
but  a  certain  coarse  way.  Such  as  are  most  plainly 
wild,  vaulting  as  it  were  above  the  moon,  we  can  well 
enough  distinguish  and  repress.  We  can  know  some- 
thing, and  can  see  a  little  way,  but  if  we  could  see 
just  one  inch  farther,  how  often  should  we  stand  back 
from  a  desire  that  seems  to  be  quite  wise,  even  as  from 
a  precipice.  You  would  see  for  example  that  the 
horse  you  are  desiring  and  bargaining  for  to-day,  will 
kick  you  into  eternity  to-morrow.  And  so  a  single 
stage  farther  of  perception  would,  almost  every  hour, 
set  you  back  in  recoil  from  some  other  and  still  other 
desired  object.  We  can  do  something,  of  course,  by 
self-government  in  this  matter,  ought  to  do  what  we 
can,  or  what  God  will  help  us  do  wisely,  but  we  want 
most  visibly  some  other  more  competent  and  less  par- 
tial kind  of  remedy. 

Sometimes  a  different  kind  of  work  is  undertaken, 
that  is  supposed  to  be  more  adequate.  A  certain  class 
of  devotees,  meaning  to  be  eminently  Christian,  set 
themselves  to  the  task  of  extirpating  their  desires ; 
counting  it  the  very  essence  of  perfection  to  have  no 
desires.  It  is  not  as  if  they  were  merely  in  a  ferment 
of  misrule,  but  as  if  they  were  properties  of  nature 
inherently  bad.  Hence  the  attempt  is,  by  abnega- 
tions, penances,  macerations,  poverties,  mortifications, 
vows  of  solitude,  and  complete  withdrawment  from 


EVEN   THE    DESIRES.  198 

the  world  to  kill  them  off,  expecting  that  when  they 
are  dead  sin  itself  will  be  dead,  and  all  the  goings  on 
of  the  soul  will  be  in  purity,  whereupon  the  vision  of 
God  will  follow.  Alas  !  it  is  not  seen  that  when  these 
impulsive  forces  of  the  soul  are  extirpated,  the  corro- 
sive will  be  left  in  as  much  greater  activity.  And  the 
result  is  that  the  imagination  goaded  by  remorse, 
breaks  into  riot,  and  the  poor  anchorite,  how  often  has 
it  been  the  fact,  begins  to  see  devils,  and  falls  into  a 
kind  of  saintly  delirium  tremens  which  is  real  in- 
sanity. 

Our  gospel,  as  I  now  proceed  to  show,  has  a  better 
way.  It  is  never  jealous  of  the  desires,  puts  us  to  no 
task  of  repression,  or  extirpation.  It  proposes  to  keep 
them  still  on  hand,  as  integral  and  even  necessary 
parts  of  our  great  moral  nature.  In  them  it  beholds 
the  grand  impulsions  of  activity,  the  robustness  of 
health,  the  spiritual  momentum  of  all  noblest  ener- 
gies, including  even  the  energies  of  prayer  itself.  It 
even  undertakes  to  intensify  the  desires,  in  the  highest 
degree  possible,  only  turning  them  away  from  what  is 
selfish  and  low  to  what  is  worthy  and  good ;  giving 
promises  for  arguments,  and  saying,  "  ask  what  ye 
will,"  "  open  thy  mouth  wide,  and  I  will  fill  it." 

And  it  is  most  refreshing  to  see  how  these  two 
young  men,  James  and  John,  who  came  to  Jesus  in 
their  most  absurd  request,  had  afterwards  got  on,  and 
had  learned  to  have  not  smaller  desires,  but  larger 
and  more  free,  because  now  trained  to  be  in  God's 
own  order.  They  write  books  of  Scripture  under  their 
17 


194  CHRIST   REGENERATES 

names,  and  one  of  them  says — "  Whatsoever  we  ask, 
we  know  that  we  have  the  petitions  that  we  desired 
of  him  ;"  "  whatsoever  we  ask  we  receive  of  him,  be- 
cause we  keep  his  commandments,  and  do  those  things 
that  are  pleasing  in  his  sight."  He  was  in  God's 
order,  and  now  his  desires  went  all  to  their  mark. 
The  other  in  his  book  is  yet  closer  to  the  point,  saying, 
"  If  any  of  you  lack  wisdom,  let  him  ask  of  God  that 
giveth  to  all  men  liberally,  and  upbraideth  not.  But 
let  him  ask  in  faith,  nothing  wavering."  And  again 
he  lectures  jnore  at  large — "From  whence  come  wars 
and  fightings  among  you  ?  come  they  not  hence  even 
of  your  lusts,  that  war  in  your  members  \  Ye  lust 
and  have  not:  ye  kill  and  desire  to  have,  and  can  not 
obtain:  ye  fight  and  war,  yet  ye  have  not,  because  ye 
ask  not.  Ye  ask  and  receive  not,  because  ye  ask 
amiss,  that  ye  may  consume  it  upon  your  lusts.  Do 
ye  think  that  the  Scripture  saith  in  vain  the  spirit 
that  dwelleth  in  us  lusteth  to  envy  ?  But  he  giveth 
more  grace."  Yes,  more  grace,  all  the  grace  that  is 
wanted  to  set  the  soul  in  God's  harmony,  and  give  it 
such  desires  as  he  can  fitly  grant.  So  these  two 
greedy  ones  of  the  former  day,  we  can  see,  had  now 
made  great  progress.  Living  for  so  long  a  time  in 
Christ,  they  had  learned  to  have  all  their  wild  lust- 
ings  put  in  accord  with  him,  and  so  to  have  them  lib- 
erally filled  without  upbraiding. 

Let  us  now  see  how  this  grace,  which  is  called 
"  more  grace,"  draws  the  desires,  in  this  manner,  into 
their  true  cast  of  relationship  with  God. 


EVEN   THE    DESIRES.  195 

It  is  done  partly,  we  shall  see,  by  prayer  itself;  that 
is  by  prayer,  helped  as  it  is  and  wrought  in  by  the 
Spirit  of  God.  For  how  grand  a  fact  is  it,  and  how 
full  of  hope,  that  the  Spirit  of  God  has  presence  in  us 
so  pervasively,  being  at  the  very  spring  point  of  all 
most  hidden  movement  in  us,  even  back  of  all  that 
we  can  reach  by  our  consciousness.  And  there  by  his 
subtle,  most  silent,  really  infinite  power,  he  works, 
configuring  the  desires,  before  they  are  born  into  con- 
sciousness, to  the  reigning  order  and  will  of  God.  So 
that  when  we  know  not  what  we  should  pray  for,  he 
helpeth  our  infirmities  and,  so  to  speak,  maketh  inter- 
cession for  us,  heaving  out  our  groanings  of  desire, 
otherwise  impossible  to  be  uttered,  into  prayers  that 
are  molded  according  to  the  will  of  God.  And  so 
all  prayer  is  encouraged,  by  promises  that  make  an  in- 
stitute of  it,  for  the  schooling  and  training  of  our  de- 
sires, and  drawing  them  into  conformity  with  God 
and  the  everlasting  reason  of  things.  In  this  way  of 
prayer  we  obtain  our  request,  because  we  have  been 
drawn  closely  enough  to  be  in  true  chime  with  his 
will,  and  so  to  make  an  authorized  pull  on  his  favor, 
by  our  right-deserving ;  even  as  the  bow-line  from  a 
boat,  pulling  on  some  object  to  which  it  is  fastened, 
draws  not  so  much  the  shore  to  it,  as  it  to  the  shore. 
In  this  way  it  comes  to  pass,  that  souls  which  are 
much  in  prayer,  and  get  skill  in  it,  obtain  their  desires 
in  great  part,  by  learning  how  to  have  good  ones  mod- 
erated in  the  will  of  God,  being  drawn  so  closely  to 
him  by  their  prayers,  that  bad  ones  fall  away  more 


196  CHRIST   REGENERATES 

and  more  completely,  and  leave  them  petitioning  out 
of  purity.  In  passing  through  which  process  the 
Spirit  helps  them  on,  preparing  them  to  prayer  by  the 
restored  quality  of  their  desires. 

Again,  there  is  a  power  in  the  new  love  Christ  be- 
gets in  the  soul,  to  remold  or  recast  the  desires,  in 
terms  of  harmony  with  each  other  and  with  God. 
When  the  supreme  love  is  changed,  being  itself  an 
imperial  and  naturally  regnant  principle,  all  the 
powers  of  misrule,  including  the  desires,  fall  into 
chime  with  it.  The  love  also  is  luminous  and  pure,  so 
that  no  base  underling,  that  would  kennel  back  of 
knowledge  in  the  mind,  can  hide  from  it.  Besides,  it 
does  not  have  to  govern  or  keep  down,  for  it  bathes 
and  tinges  all  through,  so  to  speak,  even  the  desiring 
substance,  with  a  color  from  itself.  And  then  it  fol- 
lows that,  as  the  love  is,  so  the  desires  will  be.  Loving 
my  enemy,  I  shall  desire  only  his  good.  Loving  God 
I  shall  desire  all  that  belongs  to  his  will,  and  the  ad- 
vance of  his  kingdom.  And  so,  indirectly  and  by 
association,  all  the  wild  ferment  of  the  corrupted  na- 
ture, all  the  desires  that  belong  to  a  sensual,  earthly, 
selfish  habit  will  be  gradually  changed,  and  the  whole 
order,  and  scale,  and  scheme  of  desire  will  be  re- 
placed by  another.  In  this  love  even  the  drunkard's 
appetite  will  be  silent ;  for  he  will  have  only  to 
abide  in  this  love,  to  be  free  almost  without  a  struggle. 
For  it  is  a  tide  so  full,  that  every  basest  longing  is 
submerged  by  it.  "  Breadth,  length,  depth,  height, 
and   to  know  the  love   of    God  that  passeth  knowl- 


EVEN    THE    DESIRES.  197 

edge,"  says  an  apostle,  "  that  ye  might  be  filled  with 
all  the  fullness  of  God."  And  when  the  soul  is  full  in 
this  manner,  it  wants  nothing  more,  because  it  can 
hold  nothing  more,  least  of  all  any  thing  contrary. 
All  the  wild  wishes  and  vagrant  longings  settle  now 
into  rest,  when  the  fullness  of  God  is  come.  Unruly 
desires  will  of  course  begin  to  have  their  liberty  again 
when  the  love  abates,  but  abiding  long  enough  in  God 
as  we  may,  they  will  even  die. 

And  just  here  it  is  that  we  duly  conceive  the 
Christian  wise  man.  He  is  not  any  prophet  or  seer, 
neither  is  he  any  philosopher,  but  he  is  a  man  whose 
tempers  and  aspirations  have  found  their  equilibrium 
and  right-keeping  in  the  love  of  God.  He  is  called 
wise  because  his  judgments  are  not  overset  by  the 
tempests  of  wild  desire,  and  because  all  the  gusty  in- 
stigations of  his  nature  are  laid,  leaving  it  open  to  the 
sway  of  right  reason  and  of  God's  pure  counsel. 

Our  gospel  also  brings  us  yet  another  kind  of  power 
by  which  we  have  our  desire  remolded  gradually, 
without  superintending  the  process  ourselves.  The 
Christian  soul  is  a  soul  that  by  its  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ  is  entered  into  a  most  dear  personal  fraternity 
with  him.  It  walks  with  him  as  in  a  companionship, 
has  its  conversation  with  him,  admires  him  all  the 
while  the  more,  because  it  gets  a  deeper  knowledge  or 
insight  of  what  is  in  him,  and  so,  by  a  kind  of  social 
contagion,  takes  the  mold  of  his  feeling,  and  comes 
into  configurations  of  temper  that  accord  with  his. 
-For  what  do  we  better  know,  than  that  every  man, 
17* 


198  CHRIST   REGENERATES 

especially  every  young  person,  who  is  allowed  to  join 
himself  to  any  great,  much  admired  character,  and 
pass  even  years  in  travel  and  work,  and  private  coun- 
sel with  him,  takes  his  type  insensibly,  and  grows 
into  a  mold  that  is  largely  correspondent?  He  im- 
bibes, so  to  speak,  the  man,  and  that  in  matters  too 
subtle  even  to  be  noted  by  himself.  Not  unlikely 
even  his  voice  and  accent  will  be  affected,  when  he 
has  no  thought  of  it.  How  then  shall  it  be  with  the 
disciple  that  walks  in  the  dear  great  company  of  his 
Master  ?  Suppose  he  has  no  thought  of  his  desires, 
will  he  not  be  taking  the  type  of  his  Master  insensibly 
even  in  these  ?  Is  it  too  much  to  believe  that  all  his 
inmost  tempers  and  configurations  will  be  recast,  by  a 
companionship  so  widely  different  from  all  mortal 
companionships,  so  unselfish  and  pure  and  true  ? 

But  suppose  there  still  are  left  some  traces  of  the 
old  misrule  and  disorder,  there  is  yet  a  will  of  Provi- 
dence put  running  for  him,  to  reduce  all  these  and 
finish  him,  as  it  were,  in  God's  order.  Or  it  may  be, 
if  the  sensual  and  low  lustings  of  his  former  habit  are 
already  somewhat  reduced,  that  there  is  too  much 
eagerness  left  in  his  new  Christian  habit,  and  that  he 
is  sometimes  rushing  against  God  in  it,  even  in  his 
prayers.  He  loses  patience,  it  may  be,  and  is  sorely 
galled  that  he  can  not  make  the  good  come  to  pass  as 
he  expected.  Beaten  back  thus  and  discouraged,  he 
protests  that  he  is  almost  ready  to  give  over  desiring 
any  thing ;  for  what  efficacy  is  there  even  in  his  good 
desires  \     Or  he  breaks  out  in  a  mourner's  grief,  per- 


EVEN    THE   DESIRES.  199 

haps,  saying — "  Why  should  God  take  away  my  tal- 
ented and  promising  son,  when  I  was  going  to  make 
him  such  a  blessing  to  the  world  ?  Or  why  my  friend 
who  was  such  a  blessing  already,  and  was  so  much 
wanted  by  us  all?"  By  and  by,  after  such  sallies,  it 
is  discovered,  perhaps,  that  the  desires  put  forward  so 
peremptorily  were  a  good  deal  more  romantic  or  am- 
bitious, or  subtly  selfish  than  they  should  be,  and 
could  only  be  tamed  by  discipline.  So  God  has  us  all 
the  while  in  schooling  under  his  providence,  reducing 
our  foolishness,  and  wearing  out  or  worrying  down 
our  dictations.  We  roll  up  tumultuously,  as  the 
waves  drive  up  their  masses,  break  into  foam  and 
flatten  out  on  the  shore,  but  there  is  this  very  im- 
portant difference,  that  our  desires  tire  down  at  last, 
under  God's  strong  discipline,  while  the  waves  never 
tire,  and  of  course  get  no  such  benefit.  So  there  is  a 
grand  tiring-out  principle  in  this  rule  of  Providence, 
by  which  we  are  all  the  while  being  schooled  into 
God's  order.  And  in  this  manner  the  old  Christian 
gets,  at  last,  to  have  a  wonderful  wisdom  in  his  ex- 
perience without  even  knowing  it,  because  it  is  hid  in 
his  more  chastened  tempers,  and  never  thinks  of 
being  a  rational  knowledge  at  all. 

Pressing  on  thus  close  upon  his  last  limit,  wrought 
in  by  Christ's  word  and  Spirit  and  Providence,  his 
secret  mind,  if  not  perfectly  conformed  to  God,  gets 
to  be  so  very  nearly  conformed,  that  when  he  drops 
into  the  river  to  cross  over,  and  mounts  the  rampart 
on  the  other  shore,  his  last  shred  of  discord  dies  out 


200  CHRIST    REGENERATES 

in  him,  and  lie  is  everlastingly  free.  Now  that  he  sees 
Christ  in  clear  vision  as  he  is,  he  is  thoroughly  and 
completely  like  him.  This  now  is  the  redintegration, 
the  restored  order  of  the  desires — the  most  wonderful 
work,  the  deepest  and  sublimest  achievement  of  man's 
redemption.  How  it  has  been  done,  I  have  told  you 
in  a  certain  far  off  way — closer  in  a  more  interior  way, 
I  could  not — for  these  roots  of  impulse  and  springs  of 
movement  are  clean  back  of  our  consciousness.  We 
never  saw  them,  or  descended  where  they  are,  we  only 
see  what  wells  up  from  them,  and  how  they  jostle  us 
and  drive  us  on,  by  impulsions  first  known  when  they 
are  first  felt.  Come  they  whence  ?  out  of  what  murk- 
iness,  or  steam,  or  smoke,  or  night,  or  morning,  or 
heat,  or  noonday  fire  within  ?  Little  as  we  know 
whence,  we  do  at  least  know  well  their  awful  power, 
and  how  they  drive  on  thick  and  wild,  hurling  aside, 
as  in  storms  of  the  mind,  all  self-regulative  order,  will, 
and  principle.  They  war  in  our  members,  they  chafe 
and  seethe,  and  boil,  and  burn  all  unsatisfied,  all  dis- 
appointed, and  the  man  wears  out,  and  dies  at  last 
of  anarchy,  not  knowing  why.  They  breed  aims  that 
are  meagre  and  mean,  which  is  about  the  worst  mis- 
chief that  can  befall  any  man  whether  young  or  old, 
they  blast  the  affections,  they  smirch  and  smoke  out 
the  principles,  they  both  drug  and  stimulate  the  will, 
as  by  contrary  instigations,  they  addle,  and  muddle, 
and  turn  to  confusion  about  every  thing  in  us  that  be- 
longs to  the  order  of  a  well-ordered  life.  Being  all 
in  some  sense  misbegotten  infestations  of  our  sin — ■ 


EVEN    THE     DESIEES.  201 

foul  birds,  jackals,  hungry  wolf-packs,  let  loose  in 
the  mind — they  cost  us  about  all  the  worry  and  tor- 
ment we  suffer,  and  a  great  part  of  all  fatal  disaster 
beside.  O  if  this  terrible  ferment  could  be  stilled, 
settled  in  heaven's  order,  the  wildness  and  bitter  non- 
sense taken  out,  what  a  smoothing  of  this  world  it 
would  be ! 

And  this  exactly  is  what  our  gospel  undertakes  and, 
as  I  have  shown  you,  perforins,  or  at  least  makes  pos- 
sible. I  know  not  how  it  is  that  the  religious  teachers 
have  so  little  to  say  of  the  desires, when  the  gospel 
grace  moves  on  them  in  so  great  stress  of  atten- 
tion. Perhaps  it  is  because  they  class  them  with  the 
merely  instinctive  motions,  calling  them  irresponsible, 
and  letting  them  be  so  ruled  out  of  the  account. 
"Whereas  they  are  at  the  very  bottom,  in  one  view,  of 
all  responsibility  cast  off,  and  the  soul  must  be  ham- 
pered, and  galled,  and  fouled  everlastingly  by  their 
misdoing,  unless  they  are  rectified.  They  are  in  fact 
the  hell  of  the  mind,  and  nothing  is  salvation  which 
does  not  restore  them.  Clearly  enough,  we  can  not 
purge  them  or  set  them  in  order,  by  any  course  of 
training.  We  educate  the  intellect  so  as  to  harmonize 
it  largely  with  nature,  and  law,  and  truth  ;  we  edu- 
cate the  taste,  the  sentiment,  and  to  a  certain  extent 
the  affections  ;  also  form,  color,  music  ;  also  the  hand, 
the  eye,  the  muscular  force — schools  on  schools,  col- 
leges on  colleges  we  organize  for  these  and  other  such 
kinds  of  training.     But  we  have  no  colleges  for  the 


202  CHRIST   REGENERATES 

desires,  and  see  not  how  we  could  have  if  we  would. * 
For  where  shall  such  kind  of  training  begin,  and  by 
what  course  go  on  ?  Where  are  the  diagrams  ? 
where  is  the  logic?  what  objectivities  are  there  to 
work  by  ?  Diogenes,  I  believe,  was  the  only  professor 
in  this  line,  and  he  undertook  to  moderate  the  desires 
by  his  gibes — much  as  he  might  still  a  tempest  by 
whistling  it  down.  And  yet  it  is  but  fair  to  say  that 
he  did  what  he  could.  Should  he  soberly  reprove 
them,  they  would  only  laugh  at  him.  Should  he  rea- 
son with  them,  what  care  have  they  for  reason  ?  In- 
venting a  guage  for  them,  where  is  theguage?  who 
shall  keep  it  ?  when  shall  it  be  applied  ?  No  discipline 
requiring  eyes  can  enter  intelligence  into  these  blind 
factors.  Not  amenable  to  reason,  or  capable  of  it ; 
able  on  the  other  hand  to  obfuscate  all  reason ;  able  to 
be  a  robber  talent  as  against  the  strength  and  fair  suc- 
cess and  peace  of  all  the  others ;  able,  in  short,  as  was 
just  now  intimated,  to  make  a  hell  of  the  mind,  where 
is  the  heaven  ?  Here  in  Christ  Jesus,  have  I  not 
shown  you?  In  him,  coming  forth  to  die,  have  you 
not,  after  all,  the  needed  university,  the  sufficient  and 
complete  discipline?  Drawing  near  to  him,  as  he  to 
you,  and  iinding  how  to  walk  with  him,  will  not  even 
your  desire  be  learning  tenderly  to  say,  "  Whom  have 
I  in  heaven  but  thee,  and  there  is  none  upon  earth 
that  I  desire  besides  thee"?  In  this  most  difficult  mat- 
ter come  and  see  what  he  will  do  for  you  ;  or  rather 
what  he  will  not  do.  Indeed  I  know  not  any  other 
*  Y.  C.  C. 


EVEN   THE   DESIRES.  203 

change  in  mind  that  can  abate  so  many  frictions, 
quell  so  many  distractions,  invigorate  so  great  con- 
centration of  thought  in  such  evenness  of  repose ; 
nothing  in  short  that  will  so  much  advance  the  possi- 
bilities of  a  good  and  great  life. 

And  saying  this  I  can  not  forget  or  keep  out  of 
mind  the  example  of  a  once  dear  classmate  and  friend, 
who  not  long  ago  took  his  reward  on  high.  He  was 
not  a  brilliant  man  as  we  commonly  speak,  but  there 
was  a  massive  equipoise  and  justness  in  the  harmon- 
ized action  of  his  powers  that  was  remarkable  to  us 
all.  The  robust  life  he  had  in  body  and  mind  and 
moral  habit,  required  him  never  to  be  gathering  up 
his  equilibrium,  for  it  was  never  lost.  He  was  not  in 
his  own  opinion  at  that  time  a  Christian,  but  he 
scarcely  could  have  been  a  more  sound  integer,  if  he 
had  been,  to  others.  A  few  months  after  his  gradua- 
tion, he  wrote  me  that  he  was  a  good  deal  tossed  by 
the  question  to  what  he  should  turn  himself,  as  the 
engagement  of  his  life.  We  had  supposed  that  he 
would  of  course  take  his  place  in  the  law.  But  "  the 
law,"  said  he,  "  is  for  money,  and  money  I  do  not  want. 
I  have  enough  of  that  already,  (he  belonged  to  an  im- 
mensely rich  family,)  therefore  I  am  questioning 
whether  I  can  do  better  than  to  put  in  my  life  with 
the  best,  even  with  Christ  and  his  cause.  I  think  I 
shall  there  be  satisfied,  and  I  do  not  see  any  thing  else, 
where  I  can  be."  The  result  was  that  his  whole  de- 
sire fell  into  this  current,  and  grew  large  upon  him, 
getting  volume  to  fill  his  great  nature  full ;  and  he 


204  CHRIST   REGENERATES,    ETC. 

went  into  his  clearly  divine  call  as  a  preacher  of 
Christ,  with  such  energy  and  such  visible  devotion, 
that  he  was  pushed  forward  shortly  into  a  high  church- 
leadership  that  widely  signalized  his  life,  and  made 
his  name,  in  his  death  and  before  it,  a  name  of  great 
public  honor.  And  I  think  of  him  now  as  probably 
the  happiest,  best  harmonized,  noblest-keyed  man  of 
all  my  acquaintance  here.  "Would  to  God,  my 
friends,  that  in  such  high  example  he  might  quicken 
you  to  follow. 

And  if  he  should,  let  me  tell  you,  in  this  short  cata* 
logue  of  specifications,  wThat  the  result  will  be. 

You  will  be  wishing  less  and  doing  more. 

Your  momentum  will  be  heavier,  and  your  impulse 
stronger. 

You  will  have  a  more  piercing  intellectual  percep- 
tion. 

Your  inspirations  will  range  higher,  because  your 
desires  do. 

Your  serenity  will  be  more  perfect,  as  the  sky  of 
your  mind  is  more  pure. 

Your  enjoyments  will  be  larger  and  less  invaded  by 
distractions. 

You  will  have  a  more  condensed  vigor  of  will. 

You  will  have  a  great  deal  less  need  of  success,  and 
a  great  deal  more  of  it. 

You  will  die  less  missing  life,  and  more  missed 
by  it. 

All  which  may  God  in  his  mercy  grant. 


XI. 

A   SINGLE  TRIAL  BETTER  THAN  MANY. 


"  And  as  it  is  appointed  unto  men  once  to  die,  but  after  this  the  judg- 
ment."— Htb.  ix :  27. 

It  is  a  form  of  opinion  frequently  held,  and  received 
with  increasing  favor  in  these  times,  that  there  is  to  be 
some  better  chance  given  to  bad  men  after  this  life  is 
over ;  a  second  or  renewed  trial,  that  may  be  expected 
to  result  more  favorably  ;  a  third,  possibly  a  round 
of  trials,  that  will  finally  wind  up  all  disaster,  and 
bring  the  most  intractable  spirits  into  a  genuinely  per- 
fected character.  This  hope  I  could  not  encourage, 
because  I  see  no  benefit  to  come  of  it — nothing,  in 
fact,  but  damage  and  loss. 

Observing  this  word  "  once,"  and  reading  it  more 
exactly,  "  once  for  all,"  we  discover  an  aspect  of  final- 
ity in  the  declaration  that  has  little  agreement  with  the 
expectation  referred  to — implying,  in  fact,  a  fixed  be* 
lief  that  our  present  probation,  or  state  of  trial,  is  to 
be  both  first  and  last,  a  trial  once  for  all.  That  a 
great  many  thoughtful  minds  recoil  from  what  appears 
to  be  the  undue  severity  and  rigor  of  such  an  appoint- 
ment is  not  wonderful.  That  God  should  give  us  but 
a  single  chance — one  short  trial — and  hang  every  thing 
18  (205) 


206  A   SINGLE   TRIAL 

in  our  great  life-problem  on  it,  indicates,  they  imagine, 
some  deplorable  fault  of  beneficence.  It  is  as  if  he 
had  set  our  trial  as  a  trap  to  catch  us.  We  begin  it, 
they  say,  in  a  state  of  unknowing  infancy,  and  scarcely 
get  on  far  enough  in  knowledge  to  act  our  part  wisely, 
when  we  are  hurried  away.  If  God  is  really  willing 
to  do  the  best  thing  for  us,  why  does  he  not,  will  he 
not,  give  us  a  second  trial,  or  a  lengthened,  partly  re- 
newed probation  ;  that  wTe  may  have  our  advantage  in 
correcting  the  mistakes  and  repairing  the  wrongs  of  the 
first  ?  Do  we  not  learn  a  great  deal  from  our  first 
trial  that  could  now  be  turned  to  account  ?  And  how 
often  are  we  sighing,  all  of  us,  at  the  recollection  of 
our  misdoings,  and  wishing  we  could  only  go  over  life 
again.  Every  thing  now  would  be  differently  done,  we 
think,  because  we  have  learned  so  much  from  that  ex- 
perience. We  could  hardly  make  any  such  bad  mis- 
takes again  as  wTe  have  made,  for  we  have  seen  exactly 
what  results  follow.  The  good  opportunities  we 
should  now  value  and  improve,  the  temptations  that 
have  had  their  mask  taken  off"  we  should  scornfully  re- 
ject, the  perils  that  before  overcame  ns  we  should  un- 
derstandingly  face  and  vigorously  master.  And  so,  try- 
ing life  once  more,  we  should  come  out  safely,  one  and 
all,  in  a  character  fully  consummated  and  established. 
If  now  this  kind  of  argument  were  good,  if  it  would 
be  for  our  real  advantage  as  respects  the  training  of 
our  character,  God  would  certainly  allow  us  to  go  over 
life  again.  He  would  give  us,  I  verily  believe,  twenty 
or  a  hundred  trials,  if  it  were  morally  best  for  us,  and 


BETTER   THAN    MANY.  207 

would  secure  a  greater  amount  of  good  or  holy  virtue 
as  the  result.  But  that  it  would  not,  I  am  firmly  con- 
vinced, for  reasons  that  I  now  undertake  to  set  forth. 
Kotice  then  : 

1.  The  most  prominent  and  forward  argument  above 
referred  to — viz.,  the  very  many  valuable  regrets  pre- 
pared by  our  first  trial,  which  ought  not  to  be  lost  for 
want  of  another,  such  as  will  permit  us  to  get  our  ad- 
vantage in  them.  Such  regrets  in  abundance  are,  no 
doubt  felt ;  but  we  must  not  make  more  of  them  than 
is  to  be  made.  A  really  solid,  practical  regret  is  next 
thing  to  repentance,  and  it  will  not  wait,  if  we  have  it, 
for  a  second  trial  to  give  us  a  chance  of  amendment ;  it 
will  seize  its  opportunity  now,  and  be  forthwith  con- 
summated in  repentance  and  the  beginning  of  a  right 
life.  All  such  true  regrets  are  different  from  the  lazy 
kind,  which  want  another  life  to  ripen  them.  Being 
honest  and  true,  they  are  prompt  also,  ready  for  the 
present  trial,  and  looking  for  no  other  so  far  off  as  to 
let  them  evaporate.  It  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  very  pre- 
cise, undeniable  objections  to  the  plan  of  a  second  trial, 
that  it  is  a  way — the  most  certain  way  possible — of 
making  all  our  bad  regrets  barren ;  for  what  can  spoil 
their  integrity  more  inevitably  than  that  we  are  look- 
ing for  some  good  time  to  come,  when  we  shall  turn 
them  to  account  more  easily  and  with  less  distraction  ? 
The  precise  thing  not  wanted  here  is  a  second  trial. 
The  most  unpropitious  thing  possible  for  a  soul,  wad- 
ing deep  in  the  conviction  of  neglected  opportunities, 
and  abused  powers,  is  the  proffer  of  some  posthumous, 


208  A   SINGLE   TRIAL 

second-life  chance  of  amendment,  that  dispenses  with 
the  disagreeable  necessity  of  prompt  amendment  now. 
Consider  next : 

2.  As  a  matter  partly  coincident,  the  very  self-evi- 
dent fact  that,  if  we  had  two  or  more  trials  offered  us, 
we  should  be  utterly  slack  and  neglectful  in  the  first, 
and  should  bring  it  to  its  end  almost  inevitably  in  a 
condition  utterly  unhopeful.  For  the  supposition  now, 
as  you  observe,  is  not  that  a  second  trial  is  going  to  be 
sprung  upon  us  in  the  after-state  by  surprise;  but  that 
it  is  to  be  such  a  kind  of  change  or  transition  as  we 
have  argued  for  beforehand.  We  are  to  have  it  here  as 
our  deliberate  conclusion  that,  however  the  present  first 
trial  may  go,  we  shall  at  any  rate  have  another.  Be  it 
so  ;  let  the  argument  be  sure,  and  then,  if  a  second 
trial  is  certainly  to  come,  what  shall  hold  us  to  any 
least  concern  for  the  first  ?  The  very  promise  itself  is 
license  and  chartered  recklessness.  It  even  lies  in  the 
plan,  we  may  say,  that  it  shall  be  only  a  failure ;  a 
bad,  foul  chapter — any  kind  of  chapter  we  may  like  in 
lust  and  wild  caprice  to  make  it.  Put  into  language 
outspoken,  it  says,  "  Plunge  thyself  uncaringly  into 
evil.  Fear  nothing,  be  as  irresponsible  as  you  will ; 
and,  if  it  suits  your  fancy  or  your  appetite,  or  the 
wild,  bad  impulse  that  takes  you,  be  a  devil.  And 
then,  when  you  have  burned  away  your  finest  capaci- 
ties and  highest  possibilities  of  good  in  the  hells  of 
your  lust,  know  that  a  second  chance  is  coming  in 
which  you  will  easily  make  the  damage  good."  Ah? 
that  second  chance  which  is  to  mend  the  bad  issues  of 


BETTER   THAN    MANY  209 

the  first,  what  is  it  but  a  bid  for  the  misimprovement, 
moral  abandonment,  irrecoverable  damage  and  sacrifice 
of  the  first?  It  is  even  doubtful  whether  Christian 
men  enough  could  be  raised  in  it  to  make  up,  for  the 
present  world,  a  church,  or  man  its  gospel  offices  and 
functions.     Again  : 

3.  It  is  important  or  even  quite  decisive  on  the  ques- 
tion, to  observe  and  make  due  account  of  the  fact  that 
the  second  trial  must,  in  any  case,  begin  where  the 
first  leaves  off.  It  is  ice,  by  supposition,  that  are  to  go 
into  this  second  trial ;  not  some  other  we,  new-created 
and  set  in  our  place.  We  carry  down  with  us  all  the 
old  history  lived,  and  the  results  matured,  as  they  are 
garnered  in  us,  and  with  that  dismal  outfit  we  begin 
again.  Righteous  men,  if  such  there  are,  will  not.  of 
course,  be  kept  back  here  in  embargo  to  go  through  a 
second  trial.  Only  to  the  bad  will  any  such  going 
over  of  the  round  again  have  any  look  of  opportunity. 
And  they  must  be  thoroughly  bad  for  that  matter,  else 
they  will  beg  to  be  excused;  for  such  as  are  only  less 
good  than  they  would  be,  and  have  got  some  tolerable 
confidence  of  their  future,  will  recoil  from  the  new 
trial  proposed,  with  unutterable  dread.  For  one,  I 
should  not  dare  to  choose  it  for  my  privilege.  I  should 
say,  and  I  think  a  great  many  would  join  me  in  a  like 
confession,  that  I  consciously  have  made  but  a  poor, 
sad  figure,  and  seem  rather  to  have  slighted  than  duly 
profited  by  what  my  God  has  done  for  me ;  and  yet, 
having  gotten  some  benefit,  such  as  gives  me  hope  of  my 
future,  it  is  not  enough  that  I  might  possibly  do  better 
IS* 


210  A   SINGLE   TRIAL 

on  a  second  trial ;  the  experience  I  have  had  of  myself 
makes  me  rather  afraid  that  I  should  do  worse,  even 
fatally  worse.  I  can  not  risk  it ;  indeed,  I  shudder  at 
the  possibility,  in  such  misgivings  that  nothing  short 
of  God's  compulsions  can  ever  bring  me  to  it.  And 
yet  almost  every  man  who  is  in  the  same  general  state 
— mortified  and  troubled  by  his  own  short-comings  and 
the  self-dissatisfaction  he  feels — has  said,  how  often, 
with  a  sigh,  not  considering  all  it  means,  "  O,  I 
should  love  above  all  things  to  live  my  life  over 
again  !"  ]STo,  I  deny  it ;  you  would  not.  Coming 
to  the  real  point,  your  courage  would  utterly 
fail.  If  you  must  begin  where  you  leave  off— as  you 
must,  if  you  are  the  same  being — you  would  see  no 
look  of  promise  or  charm  of  opportunity  in  the  new 
trial  permitted,  but  would  drawback  rather  in  utter  re- 
vulsion. Possibly  certain  worn-out  hacks  of  grace  and 
judgment  might  be  so  far  bereft  of  perception,  as  to 
think  it  a  good  thing  to  have  a  second  turn  thus  under 
grace  and  judgment.  But  they  must  begin  their  sec- 
ond turn  where  they  ended  their  first,  with  all  their 
finest  capabilities  deflowered,  and  all  their  sins  stuck 
fast  in  them — pinned  through  their  moral  nature  by 
habit — with  a  dry,  bad  mind,  and  a  heart  poisoned  by 
its  own  passion,  and  a  wild,  distempered  will ;  and, 
having  only  this  poor,  battered,  broken  furniture,  they 
must  now  set  themselves  to  another  chapter  of  trial, 
and  make  it  a  good  one.  They  must,  I  say  ;  they  un- 
dertake to  do  it,  but  who  can  believe  that  they  will  ? 
4.  Considering  the  fact  that  our  second  trial  must 


BETTER   THAN    MANY.  211 

begin  where  the  first  leaves  off,  we  shall  find  it  quite 
impossible  to  conceive  the  state  supposed,  in  a  way 
that  does  not  make  it  utterly  unpromising  and  very 
nearly  absurd.  We  imagine,  it  is  true,  what  a  beauti- 
ful thing  it  would  be  to  live  our  life  over  again,  begin- 
ning at  our  childhood  and  carrying  back  into  it  all  the 
experiences  we  have  gained ;  and  we  are  so  much  fas- 
cinated that  we  do  not  see  the  nonsense  of  it.  We  are 
really  conceiving  the  old  spoiled  cargo  of  an  old  bad 
life  carried  onward  and  put  upon  or  put  into  a  very 
young  child ;  and  are  nowise  shocked,  either  by  the 
absurdity  of  the  plan  or  the  woe  of  the  child.  What 
now  is  the  hapless  creature  going  to  do,  or  be,  or  how 
to  carry  himself?  Not,  certainly,  to  act  his  old  in- 
fancy over  again.  To  handle  again,  see,  touch,  taste, 
question,  learn :  in  that  way  to  stock  the  mind  with 
symbols,  and  get  in  the  timber  of  thought  and  feeling 
and  fancy  and  action — which  is  the  beautiful  office  of 
childhood — that  is  no  more  wanted.  The  timber  is  all 
in  beforehand,  and  the  supposition  is  that  the  child- 
soul,  thus  completely  stocked  already,  will  begin  to  be 
wise  off-hand.  But  look  again  at  this  very  absurd 
creature — a  little  child  with  a  grown  man's  wisdoms, 
follies,  vices,  sins,  all  packed  in,  to  be  the  furniture  of 
a  certainly  wise,  good  life  !  Why,  the  creature  is  not 
a  child,  if  you  call  him  so ;  but  a  tiny  old  man,  who 
has  worn  out  one  life  to  no  good  purpose,  and  is  stock- 
ing another  out  of  it  to  begin  again.  The  UnknOW- 
ingness,  the  innocence,  the  sweet  simplicity  of  child- 
hood, the  all-questioning  observation — none  of  these 


212  A   SINGLE   TRIAL 

are  in  him  ;  but  only  what  a  sinner  knew  and  was, 
when  he  left  off  his  former  trial  and  died  with  the 
guilt  of  it  on  him.  "We  hardly  know  whether  to  laugh 
or  be  sad  when  we  fall  upon  one  of  these  premature 
old  children,  seeing  him  walk  and  hearing  him  talk 
agedly,  as  if  getting  ripe  in  the  green.  But  here  we 
have  the  oldness  without  the  innocence — a  full-grown, 
rank-grown  sinner  that  was,  tottling  again  upon  his 
tender  feet ;  an  old,  sixty-year-old  man,  it  may  be, 
who  has  been  actually  set  up  as  a  child  again  to  make 
his  beginnings  of  wisdom  ;  all  which  he  is  to  do  by  the 
help  of  old  miscarriages  and  sins,  and  it  may  be  vices. 
Childhood,  they  say,  is  the  hopeful  thing  now  for  him ; 
but  hapless,  utterly  hapless  creature,  is  the  child  ! 

Clearly  enough  there  is  no  such  thing  possible  as  a 
second  trial  beginning  at  the  point  of  childhood ;  that 
is  only  a  very  absurd  fiction  that  we  raise  when  we  are 
playing  with  our  idle  regrets.  The  second  trial,  if 
there  be  one,  has,  of  course,  no  time  of  childhood  in  it. 
"What  we  call  the  ductilities,  flexibilities,  tender  possi- 
bilities of  childhood  and  family  training  are  gone  by. 
Family  itself  is  gone  by,  and  the  family  spheres  and 
affections— possible  only  in  the  terms  of  family  repro- 
duction— are  henceforth  left  behind.  If  conscious  ties 
of  fatherly  and  filial  relationship  remain,  they  remain 
as  to  persons  who  have  already  graduated  in  them, 
and  have  them  only  as  in  memory.  AVhat  there  is  of 
society  now,  in  this  second  state,  is  made  up  of  beings 
sole  and  separate ;  existing  in  full  maturity  and  com- 
ing to  their  second  trial  in  such  characters  and  habits 


BETTER   THAN    MANY.  213 

as  they  have  shaped  by  their  first.  Almost  of  neces- 
sity, they  will  now  be  more  selfish  than  ever ;  for,  the 
unselfish  industries  that,  in  their  first  trial,  were  gener- 
ously occupied  in  providing  a  home — where  hospitali 
ties  should  be  dispensed  to  friends,  and  wife  and  chil- 
dren have  their  free  supply — are  now  displaced  by  in- 
dustries that  only  make  dry  providence  for  self.  They 
are  now  sole  monks  and  nuns,  we  may  say,  in  their 
conventual — only  monks  and  nuns  that  have  not  found, 
as  yet,  their  piety — coming  hither  to  see,  if  possibly 
the  dreariness  of  their  grown-up,  blasted  condition 
may  not  do  something  for  them.  To  any  rational 
mind  the  prospect  must  be  dismally  discouraging. 

Probably  the  very  best  arrangement  for  a  second 
trial  that  can  be  conceived  will  be  made  by  simply  giv- 
ing a  new  lease  of  life,  that  doubles  the  length  of  it 
here  ;  because,  in  that  case,  family  feelings  and  con- 
nections, and  the  wonted  social  relations  of  time,  will 
to  some  extent  be  continued.  Add  another  thirty, 
fifty,  or  eighty  years,  and  let  the  addition  be  the  new 
trial.  And  what  will  be  the  result  ?  Exactly  the 
same  that  befel  the  old  primeval  race  of  reprobates  be- 
fore the  flood — viz.,  that  having  lived  out  their  first 
five  hundred  years,  they  went  on  to  live  a  second 
five  hundred,  and  grow  worse,  instead  of  better,  for 
their  opportunity.  If  they  wanted  a  second  trial,  they 
had  it  in  the  very  best  and  most  favorable  conditions 
possible — far  better  and  more  favorable  than  if  they 
had  passed  through  death  to  receive  it  in  the  after- 
life ;  because  they  are  not  torn  away  from  their  kind, 


214  A  SINGLE   TRIAL 

or  from  the  society  of  the  good,  but  are  permitted  to 
enjoy,  in  some  degree,  all  the  tender  offices  of  natural 
affection,  and  live  in  all  the  bonds  of  family  providence 
and  duty.  And  what,  in  fact,  was  proved  by  these 
ante-diluvial  men  but  that,  when  too  much  of  time  or 
trial  is  given,  no  stringent  motive  for  decisive  choice  in 
good  is  left.  That  last  five  hundred  years  was  a  very 
generous  allowance,  given,  we  might  say,  for  the 
amendment  of  their  wretchedly  bad  life  in  the  first 
five  hundred ;  but,  instead  of  amendment,  it  only 
made  them  more  completely  reprobate.  Too  much 
trial,  as  they  found,  is  damage — diminishing,  and  not 
increasing,  the  chances  of  a  good  result. 

Let  us  not  be  deceived  here  by  a  certain  off-hand 
way  of  judgment ;  as  if  the  great  shock  to  be  suffered 
in  passing  to  another  world,  supposing  that  we  are  to 
have  our  second  trial  there,  initiated  the  new  experi- 
ence in  a  way  to  make  it  more  promising.  Thus,  if  we 
had  actually  gone  through  death,  and  begun  to  live 
again,  having  it  shown  us  at  God's  bar  that  we  have 
made  a  dreadful  issue  of  our  trial,  we  should  know  our 
immortality,  it  will  be  thought,  by  experiment,  and 
should  have  our  sensibility  awakened,  as  it  were,  by  a 
shock  of  tremendous  discovery ;  and  so  we  should  be 
set  in  a  position  of  immense  advantage,  as  regards  the 
improvement  of  our  new  opportunity.  Just  as  every 
malefactor,  I  suppose,  who  is  caught  in  a  crime,  thinks 
that  he  shall  certainly  make  an  upright  life,  if  now, 
this  once,  he  can  be  respited  and  allowed  another  op- 
portunity.    No !  he  will  do  no  such  thing ;  but  will 


BETTER   THAN   MANY.  215 

pitch  himself  into  any  crime  that  is  worse,  about  as 
soon  as  the  shock  of  his  arrest  passes  off,  and  he  begins 
to  act  himself  again.  So,  the  prison  convict  goes  his 
dreary  round  of  work  and  solitude  and  silence,  saying 
inwardly  :  "  O,  what  a  fool  am  I  to  be  here  !  Would 
that  I  could  live  my  life  over  again,  and  I  would  not!" 
But  he  will  be  a  most  remarkable  felon  if,  when  his 
time  expires,  he  does  not  go  out  to  live  his  life  exactly 
over  again,  making  good  his  return  within  a  short^six 
months.  So  we  think  a  man  must  assuredly  become  a 
saint,  if  only  a  second  trial  after  death  is  given  him  : 
when  it  will  turn  out  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  the 
saints  are  not  made  by  occasions,  opportunities,  or  ap- 
palling necessities,  least  of  all  where  the  noblest  occa- 
sions and  highest  opportunities  and  most  cogent  neces- 
sities are  already  trampled  and  lost.  Great  shocks  felt 
or  crises  past  have  no  value  as  respects  the  begin- 
nings of  a  right  life,  save  as  they  induce  consideration, 
and  by  such  consideration,  make  a  new  atmosphere  of 
truth  and  feeling  for  the  sours  engagement  and  recov- 
ery  to  good.  But  where  consideration  has  so  often 
been  freshened  by  new  providences  and  new  revela- 
tions of  God,  and  all  best  capacities  of  truth  and  feel- 
ing have  been  mocked  and  hardened  by  the  abuses  of 
a  life,  what  magic  is  there  to  be  in  the  strange  environ- 
ments and  discoveries  of  another  state  of  being,  that 
they  are  going  to  make  men  susceptible  without  sus- 
ceptibilities left,  and  turn  them  back  to  the  right  which 
they  have  lost  the  sense  of,  and  from  which  they  have 
all  their  life  long  turned  uncaringly   away  ?      Their 


216  A   SINGLE   TRIAL 

shock  of  novelty  in  the  transition  will  pass  off  in  a 
very  short  time,  and  they  will  settle  back  into  their 
wild,  wrong  habit,  or  willfully  neglectful  obstinacy,  to 
choose  and  live  and  be  precisely  as  before.     Again  : 

5.  We  have  large  material  for  the  settlement  of  this 
question  in  our  own  personal  experience  and  observa- 
tion. The  likeliest  times  of  duty  and  character  we 
every  day  perceive  are  not  the  last  or  latest,  but  the 
times  of  youth,  and  probably  quite  early  youth ;  for 
the  capital  stock  or  fund  most  wanted,  as  regards  the 
finest  possibilities  of  character,  is  made  up  of  ingenuous 
feeling,  sentiments  unmixed  with  evil-doing,  unsophis- 
ticated convictions,  free  and  pure  aspirations,  not  of 
knowledges  and  wise  sagacities,  gotten  by  experience. 
These  prudentials,  these  wise  knowledges,  are  too  com- 
monly bad  knowledges,  gotten  by  irrecoverable  losses. 
If  we  say  that  a  soul  must  have  them,  and  that,  having 
gotten  in  a  good  stock  of  them  on  its  first  trial,  it  is, 
therefore,  ready,  on  a  second,  to  act  wisely,  we  very 
certainly  mistake.  The  sad  thing  is  that  a  soul  may 
know  too  much,  obtaining  knowledges  that  cost  many 
times  more  than  they  are  worth — such  as  come  of  self- 
damaging  vices  and  the  flagrant  excesses  of  a  bad  life. 
All  such  ways  of  abuse  create  a  knowledge,  doubtless  ; 
but  what  can  these  desolating  knowledges,  these  burnt- 
in,  branded  curses  of  an  old  and  evil  life,  do  for  the 
immortal  prospects  of  a  soul  ?  What,  in  fact,  is  the 
reason  why  a  great  many  never  can,  or  will,  be- 
come true  men  of  God  here  in  this  life  ;  but  that  they 
have  been  going  too  deep  into  knowledge,  and  have 


BETTER   THAN   MANY.  217 

gotten  too  much  experience  at  too  great  cost  ?  Their 
knowledges  are  vitriol  in  their  capabilities,  eating  out 
and  searing  over  all  the  noblest  affinities  and  finest  as- 
pirations God  gave  them  to  be  the  stock  and  possibility 
of  their  future.  And,  therefore,  it  becomes  a  fixed 
conclusion  with  us  that  a  man  going  into  his  trial  shall 
make  much  of  his  unsophisticated  age,  and  the  noble, 
inborn  sensitiveness  of  his  early  moral  convictions,  and 
be  sadly,  fearfully  jealous  of  the  wisdom  he  will  gel  by 
their  loss.  This  dreary  and  dry  wisdom,  that  is  going 
to  be  ripened  by  the  practice  of  unrighteous  years,  can 
do  little  for  the  subject,  however  much  he  values  it. 
His  green  first  third  of  life  has  grand  possibility  of 
fruit ;  his  wise  last  third  has  probably  none ;  and  he 
draws  himself  very  close  upon  the  discovery  of  this 
fact  as  he  approaches  the  end  of  his  trial.  The  gold- 
washers  of  California,  having  passed  their  dirt  once 
through  the  sluice,  drop  what  they  call  "  the  tailings  " 
below  ;  and  sometimes  they  discover  a  very  little  gold 
in  these,  enough  to  pay  for  milling  them  over  again. 
But  the  tailings  of  an  old,  bad  life,  which  has  yielded 
no  gold  on  the  first  trial — who  will  go  to  wrork  on 
them  with  any  least  prospect  of  success  ?  As  certainly 
'as  the  man  understands  himself,  he  will  see  that  his 
good  possibilities  will  be  gone,  and  will  feel  the  least 
imaginable  desire  of  a  second  trial,  to  mill  over  the 
dregs  of  his  unblest  experience.  We  ourselves,  at 
least,  know  perfectly  that  nothing  will  come  of  it. 

But  the  new  state  expected,  as  some  will  perhaps 
remind  us,  is  to  be  a  state  of  punishment,  and  the 
19 


218  A  SINGLE   TRIAL 

pains  of  it,  working  purgatorially,  must  have  great 
and  decisive  effects.  Whereas,  the  very  thing  best 
proved  by  observation  is  that  pains  are  nearly  unrela- 
tional  as  respects  the  improvement  of  character.  The 
fears  of  pain  or  penalty,  so  much  derided  commonly 
by  these  prophets  of  purgatorial  benefit,  might  do 
something  as  appeals  to  consideration  and  prepara- 
tives in  that  manner  of  repentance ;  but  pain,  pain 
itself,  nothing.  It  even  disqualifies  consideration. 
Pain  is  force,  necessity,  a  grinding  stress  of  abso- 
lutism, which  may  do  something  in  breaking  down  a 
will,  but  never  in  the  world  was  known  to  lift  up  a 
will  out  of  weakness  and  evil,  or  ennoble  it  in  the 
liberty  and  free  ascension  of  good.  Breaking  down  a 
will  too,  be  it  observed,  is  not  conversion,  but  catas- 
trophe rather  and  death — just  that  which  is  the  un- 
dergirding  import  and  reality  of  second  death. 

Observation  gives  us  also  another  fact,  which  is 
even  more  impressive — viz.,  that  with  all  that  is  said 
and  assumed  and  argued  for,  and  stiffly  asserted,  as 
regards  the  fact  of  a  second  trial  hereafter,  the  whole 
world  tacitly  concedes,  nevertheless,  that  no  such  new 
condition  is,  in  fact,  expected.  For  no  unbeliever,  no 
practically  godless  and  really  apostate  believer,  no  bad 
man  groaning  under  his  vices,  no  drunkard  writhing 
under  his  chains,  no  scoffing  Altamont  overtaken  by 
remorse,  no  human  creature,  whether  uninstructed 
Pagan  or  best  instructed  philosopher,  and  (what  is 
most  significant  of  all)  no  loosest,  largest  freethinker, 
who  asserts  most  confidently   the  faith  of   a  second 


BETTER  THAN   MANY.  219 

trial  hereafter,  goes  out  of  life — I  never  heard  of  such 
a  case — talking  of  the  new  chance  now  to  be  given 
him,  and  the  high,  free  time  he  is  going  to  have,  in 
the  more  propitious  trial  that  will  suffer  him  to  mend, 
his  defects  and  the  consciously  bad  ways  that  havel 
corrupted  him.  All  such  advocates  of  a  basement; 
gospel,  under  the  world  and  after  the  grave,  convince 
themselves,  by  what  they  consider  most  indisputable 
and  profoundly  wise  arguments,  that  their  ultimation 
gospel,  their  posthumous  salvation,  will  have  power  to 
mend  all  damage  and  smooth  away  all  woes  of  char- 
acter begun ;  but  when  we  look  to  see  those  deep 
natural  instincts,  which  are  always  the  spontaneous 
interpreters  of  our  humanity,  giving  out  their  indica- 
tions, we  find  our  believers  in  the  underworld  oppor- 
tunity clinging  fast  to  life,  as  if  they  had  no  such 
faith  at  all  in  them,  recoiling  with  instinctive  shudder 
from  death,  and  hailing  never  in  glad  welcome  the 
better  day  now  come  to  help  their  recovery — in  which 
they  may  discover,  as  plainly  as  need  be,  themselves, 
that  their  arguments  are  one  thing,  and  the  verdict  of 
their  immortal,  deep-discerning  judgments  another. 
They  contrive  how  it  is  to  be,  they  reason,  they  prom- 
ise, they  encourage  ;  but  their  always  demonstrative 
nature  nowhere  runs  up  a  flag  of  hope  or  gives  any 
slightest  indication.  If  the  question  be  whether  we 
are  immortal,  all  the  flags  of  natural  hope  are  out 
streaming  on  every  hill ;  but  here  expectation  is  dumb 
and  shows  no  sign  ! 

But  my  object  in  this  argument,  drawing  it  here  to 


220  A   SINGLE   TRIAL 

a  close,  is  not  so  much  to  show  that  no  second  trial  is 
to  be  had  as  to  show  the  undesirableness  of  it.  The 
matter  itself  is  variously  conceived.  According  to 
some,  the  wicked  dead  will  be  manipulated  by  long 
tractations  in  the  better  gospel  of  the  pains,  and  will 
so,  at  last,  be  purified.  According  to  others,  they  will 
be  softened  by  long  annealings  under  undeserved  and 
extra-comfortable  indulgences.  By  some  it  is  believed 
that  we  were  not  made  immortal  by  nature,  and  shall, 
therefore,  cease  altogether  if  we  do  not  take  hold  of 
the  eternal  life  in  Christ  to  make  us  immortal.  Others 
think  we  were  made  to  be  immortal,  but  fell  out  of 
immortality  in  our  sin,  and  so  are  to  quite  die  out  if 
we  do  not  forsake  it.  Some  think  that  the  future  pun- 
ishment will  itself  wear  out  life  in  the  bad,  and  finally 
make  a  complete  end  of  it.  I  say  nothing  of  these  or 
any  other  varieties  in  the  unbeliefs  current.  I  say 
nothing  of  eternal  punishment  itself.  One  thing  at  a 
time,  I  am  saying,  one  thing  at  a  time;  and  then, 
having  the  one  thing  settled,  as  I  think  it  now  is,  that 
no  second  trial  hereafter  is  either  to  be  desired  or  al- 
lowed, we  have  at  least  one  very  great  point  estab- 
lished, and  can  well  enough  allow  the  other  questions 
to  fare  as  they  may.  Make  what  you  will  of  all  these 
other  questions,  only  have  it  as  a  fact  made  clear, 
Avhich  I  think  I  have  shown  as  decisively  as  it  need 
be,  that  there  is  no  possible  advantage  in  a  second 
trial  promised  beforehand,  and  that  we  are  better  off 
without  the  supposed  advantage  than  with — have  this 
clear,  I  say,  and  all  the  other  last  things  may  be  left 


BETTER   THAN    MANY.  221 

to  find  their  own  settlement.  Enough  that  there  is  no 
severity  in  having  but  a  single  trial,  and  that,  if  more 
than  one  were  offered,  we  should  do  well  to  petition 
against  it.  Beyond  a  question,  God,  in  giving  us  our 
one  opportunity  and  no  more,  fixes  this  close  limit  be- 
cause one  will  do  more  for  us  than  many.  A  greater 
number — two,  ten,  twenty — we  could  not  have  with- 
out unspeakable  damage  and  loss. 

My  argument  appears  to  be  thus  ended,  but  I  must 
not  shut  up  the  conclusion  before  it  is  ready.  And  is 
no  better  account  then  to  be  made,  some  one  may  ask, 
of  the  multitudes  brought  up  under  heathenism,  or 
the  drill  of  vice,  or  the  taint  of  bad  society  ?  If  there 
is  no  second  chance  for  them,  what  chance  have  they  % 
I  admit  the  seeming  severity  of  their  lot,  but  a  great 
many  things  are  none  the  less  true  because  they  seem 
to  be  severe.  They  are  certainly  not  as  unprivileged 
as  we  commonly  think.  They  have  all  great  light. 
They  all  condemn  and  blame  themselves.  The  Spirit 
of  God  is  with  them.  Some  of  them  are  truly  born 
of  the  Spirit,  and  all  might  be.  At  any  rate,  all  the 
arguments  I  have  been  urging  to  show  the  absurdity 
of  a  second  trial,  apply  to  them  as  to  others — they 
have  lost  the  tractabilities  of  childhood  ;  their  staple  of 
good  possibility  is  worn  out ;  they  are  gotten  com- 
pletely by  the  opportunity  of  a  new  beginning.  We 
must  therefore  leave  them  to  God,  certain  that  he  will 
somehow  mitigate  any  look  of  hardship  in  their  lot. 
Only  coming  back  here  on  our  conclusion,  that  a  sec- 
19* 


222  A   SINGLE   TRIAL 

ond  trial  can  do  nothing  for  them,  and  that  whatever 
else  may  befall  them  this  will  not. 

And  since  we  are  looking  at  questions  raised  by 
doubt,  I  will  not  shrink  from  naming  another  which  I 
can  not  so  explicitly  answer ;  viz.,  the  seeming  look 
of  fitness  in  a  second  trial,  for  such  as  die  in  their  in- 
fancy, or  in  youth  so  far  unspent  as  to  allow  their 
carrying  all  best  possibilities  with  them.  Why  should 
not  such  have  a  state  given  them,  wherein  they  may 
unfold  the  character  they  are  made  for?  And  why,  it 
may  be  asked  in  reply,  were  they  not  kept  here  to  do 
it,  where  the  advantages  are  so  many  and  so  evidently 
great  ?  Perhaps  we  can  as  little  answer  one  question 
as  the  other.  However,  we  do  not  certainly  know 
that  any  one  of  these  infants  and  youths  is  not  taken 
away  to  another  and  more  genial  state,  there  to  be  un- 
folded and  trained,  just  because  there  are  seeds  of 
holy  possibility  already  planted  in  them  which  might 
otherwise  be  extirpated.  Their  second  state  is  not,  in 
that  case,  their  second  trial  any  more  than  that  of 
such  as  die  in  the  full  maturity  of  a  sanctified  habit. 
In  these  young-life  souls  there  may  certainly  be  rich 
stores  of  rudimental  possibility,  waiting  for  the  edu- 
cating forces  of  a  pure,  sweet  world,  and  it  may  be 
that  so  many  are  carried  forward  thus  early,  to  make 
a  larger  infusion  of  unsophisticated  character  than  a 
world  of  natures  fully  matured  would  reveal. 

Here,  then,  we  are,  my  friends,  face  to  face  with  our 
conclusion ;  and  a  most  serious  one  it  is.  It  raises 
questions  for  us  that  we  can  not  wisely  push  aside. 


BETTER  THAN    MANY.  223 

All  of  us  are  on  our  way,  in  our  one  decisive  lifetime 
trial ;  and  what  are  we  doing  with  it  1  How  is  it 
turning  ?  Some  of  us  are  but  a  little  way  advanced 
in  it,  and  all  the  fine  possibilities  of  our  outfit  are  still 
on  hand,  scarcely  if  at  all  abridged.  Great,  my  young 
friends,  is  your  advantage,  greater  than  if  a  hundred 
other  stages  of  probation  were  promised  you.  Precious 
are  the  gifts,  and  precious  are  the  moments  as  they  fly. 
Act,  every  one,  as  if  this  eventful  experiment  were 
now  on  its  way  and  passing  rapidly.  Allow  no  ex- 
pectation of  another  to  beguile  you.  Bring  in  all 
your  powers,  and  center  them  on  this  point  of  crisis, 
now  so  close  at  hand,  knowing  that  God's  friendship 
can  not  be  too  soon  secured.  Others  of  your  number, 
it  may  be,  are  getting  farther  on.  A  considerable  or 
even  principal  part  of  their  trial,  it  may  be,  is  now 
gone  by.  Is  it  going  well  ?  If  the  tree  is  to  lie  as  it 
falls,  is  it  falling  rightly  ?  Have  you  good  confidence 
of  the  end  ?  Once  for  all,  remember,  once  for  all. 
And  it  is  appointed  unto  men  once  for  all  to  die,  but 
after  that  the  judgment. 


XII. 

SELF-EXAMINATION  EXAMINED. 


"  Examine   me,    0    Lord,    and    prove    me,    try    my   reins   and   my 
heart."— Ps.    26:    2. 

Self-examination  is  to  many  disciples  a  kind  of 
first  point  in  practical  religion.  We  have  also  labored 
treatises  from  the  press,  in  which  set  rules  are  drawn 
out,  whereby  the  self-examining  process  may  be  skill- 
fully and  scientifically  conducted.  In  one  way  or 
another,  this  particular  type  of  Christian  exercise  has 
come  so  near  being  the  staple  matter  of  a  good  life, 
that  any  common  disciple  called  to  address  some 
brotherhood  of  strangers,  will  probably  not  get  on 
many  sentences  without  falling  into  the  exhortational 
mood  and  beginning  to  say — "  Brethren,  let  us  examine 
ourselves."  All  which  is  the  more  wearisome  that  it 
signifies  so  little,  and  requires  only  the  dryest  kind  of 
sanctimony  to  carry  it  on.  We  might  very  naturally 
presume,  that  there  must  be  a  great  deal  of  Scripture 
for  this  kind  of  practice  ;  and  yet  I  do  not  know 
more  than  two  passages  that  can  be  cited  for  it  at  all ; 
one  of  which  certainly  has  no  such  meaning,  and  the 
other  of  which  has,  at  most,  only  a  doubtful,  or  vari- 
antly  shaded  meaning,  such  as  carries  no  sufficient 
(224) 


SELF-EXAMINATION    EXAMINED.  225 

authority  for  the  practice.  The  first  named  passage  is 
the  standing  proof-text  always  cited — "  Examine  your- 
selves whether  ye  be  in  the  faith,  prove  your  own 
selves."  (II  Cor.  13 :  5.)  Where  it  will  be  seen,  at  a 
glance,  by  the  mere  English  reader,  and  much  more 
certainly  by  a  scholar  versed  in  the  original  language, 
that  the  apostle  is  simply  referring  the  Corinthians 
here  to  their  own  new  spiritual  state,  for  proof  that 
he  has  had  a  power  in  them  for  good,  and  has  even 
transformed  them  inwardly  by  his  ministrations. 
"  Some  of  you  pretend,"  he  says,  "  that  I  am  weak,  and 
bring  no  divine  witness  in  my  preaching.  Since  then 
ye  seek  a  proof  of  Christ  speaking  in  me,  which  to 
youward  is  not  weak  but  mighty  in  you,  examine 
yourselves  [not  whether,  but  if,  or  since]  you  are  in  the 
faith.  Look  into  your  own  bosoms — know  you  not 
that  Jesus  Christ  is  in  you,  except  you  be  reprobates." 
He  is  not  putting  these  Corinthians  on  a  course  of 
analytic  self-study,  or  self-examination  to  settle  the 
evidence  of  their  discipleship.  He  has  no  thought  of 
it,  that  is  not  his  subject.  His  point  is  the  great  in- 
justice they  are  doing  him,  in  running  down  the 
significance  of  his  ministry.  Therefore  to  correct 
them,  he  says,  just  look  into  your  own  bosom  and  you 
will  see,  that  I  have  not  been  weak  but  mighty  in 
you.  He  assumes  their  discipleship  here,  and  is  not 
putting  them  to  the  proof,  but  only  drawing  from  it 
ex  co?icessis,  an  undeniable  test  of  his  own  apostleship. 
How  this  passage  ever  came  to  be  applied,  as  it  has 
been,  to   the  testing   and   self-certifying  security  of 


226  SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED. 

character,  I  really  do  not  know.  There  could  not  be 
a  plainer  case  of  total  misapplication.  The  other 
passage  has  a  little  more  show  of  authority,  but  is  not 
by  any  means  decisive.  It  says  :  (I  Cor.  11  :  28,) 
"  Let  a  man  examine  himself,  and  so  let  him  eat ;" 
that  is,  "  discerning  the  Lord's  body."  But  the  point 
here  is  to  merely  interpose  a  caution,  an  appeal  of  cir- 
cumspection, that  will  prepare  the  receiver  of  the 
supper  to  partake  with  reverence — let  him  put  him- 
self to  the  proof  sufficiently  to  make  sure  of  this — 
there  is  no  thought  of  putting  him  on  a  retrospective 
study  and  testing  of  his  discipleship.  At  any  rate, 
this  would  be  a  very  doubtful  construction,  at  the 
best,  and  as  it  puts  the  text  wholly  by  itself,  no  other 
to  that  effect  being  found  in  the  whole  Scripture,  it  is 
certainly  more  reverent  not  to  force  it  on  a  construc- 
tion so  very  insufficiently  supported. 

To  make  these  strictures  is  not  altogether  pleasant, 
for  it  may  even  shock  the  feeling  of  some,  as  if  it 
were  about  the  same  thing  as  a  virtual  tearing  out  of 
the  most  approved  foundations  of  piety.  But  I  hope 
all  such  will  be  sufficiently  comforted,  on  more  ma- 
ture reflection,  if  I  turn  them  over  to  God's  own  way, 
in  what  is  nearest  at  hand  in  the  Scripture,  and  let 
them  have  it  as  a  compensation  for  what  has  been 
taken  away.  The  Scripture  sends  us  to  God  for  the 
examinations  wanted,  and  not,  in  any  case,  to  our- 
selves ;  knowing  that  when  God  proves  us,  we  shall 
be  thoroughly  and  truly  proved,  and  that  what  as- 


SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED.  227 

surance  he  may  give  us,  will  be  more  than  a  guess,  or 
opinion,  or  conclusion  of  our  own,  a  veritable  witness 
of  God  in  our  hearts.  In  this  way  the  Psalmist 
prays — "  Examine  me,  O  Lord,  and  prove  me,  try  my 
reins  and  my  heart."  And  again — "  Search  me,  0 
God,  and  know  my  heart,  try  me  and  know  my 
thoughts,  and  see  if  there  be  any  wicked  way  in  me, 
and  lead  me  in  the  way  everlasting."  It  was  also  an 
accepted  Proverb  even  in  the  same  view — "  The 
fining  pot  is  for  silver,  and  the  furnace  for  gold,  but 
the  Lord  trieth  the  hearts." 

Here  then — for  I  am  going  to  speak  to-day,  not  so 
much  for  impression  as  for  instruction — here  is  the 
true  and  proper  method  of  examination  ;  it  must  be 
accomplished  under  and  through  the  scrutiny,  or  inspecting 
power  of  God;  we  tridy  prove  ourselves,  when  he  proves 
us,  and  may  rightly  approve  ourselves,  only  when  he  ap- 
proves us.     Accordingly — 

1.  I  put  forward  as  a  fact,  in  unfolding  the  subject 
stated,  that  God  certainly  can  examine  us,  and  we  can 
not,  in  any  but  the  most  superficial  and  incomplete 
sense,  examine  ourselves.  For,  in  the  first  place,  our 
memory  is  too  short  and  scant,  to  recall  or  restore  the 
conception  of  one  in  a  hundred  millions  of  our  acts, 
leaving  all  the  innumerable  fugacities  that  make  up 
our  lives,  to  fly  away  and  print  no  track  of  passage 
on  the  air  passed  through.  In  the  next  place  if  we 
could  recall  them,  every  one,  we  could  never  go  over 
the  survey  of  a  material  so  vast,  and  multiplicities  so 
nearly  infinite,  in  a  way  to  make  up  any  judgment  of 


228  SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED. 

them,  or  of  ourselves  as  represented  in  them.  And 
then,  in  the  next  place,  since  the  understanding  of  our 
present  state  is  impossible  without  understanding  all 
the  causes  in  our  action,  that  have  been  fashioning  the 
character  and  shaping  the  figure  of  it,  our  faculty  is 
even  shorter  here  than  before.  Plainly  enough  om- 
niscience only  is  equal  to  that ;  which  is  the  same  as 
to  say  that  God  only  is  able,  or  even  proximately 
able.  Besides,  when  we  propose  to  examine  ourselves, 
we  do  not  really  mean  much  by  it — only  that  we  pro- 
pose to  question  ourselves  by  certain  rules  or  tests, 
which  in  fact  would  touch  and  try  almost  nothing. 
"We  suppose  indeed  that  we  are  going  to  make  very 
serious  and  thorough  work,  when,  in  fact,  we  are  only 
proposing  to  make  up  a  sound  verdict  on  our  state,  by 
two  or  three  mere  items  of  questioning.  How  differ- 
ent a  matter  to  be  examined  by  God,  who  knows  all 
the  historic  connections  by  which  our  present  state  is 
linked  to  our  past  life,  and  is  able  to  trace  all  the 
nicest  shades  of  our  character  to  the  subtleties  of  ac- 
tion by  which  they  have  been  sketched  and  colored  in 
our  minds.  And  yet,  again,  if  we  let  go  all  inquiring 
into  the  ways  in  which  we  have  grown  to  be  what  we 
are,  the  question,  what  we  are,  is  scarcely  less  diffi- 
cult. How  shall  we  fathom  the  abysses,  and  dis- 
tinctly conceive  the  infinite  subtleties  of  our  present 
state  itself — all  the  more  nearly  out  of  understanding, 
or  beyond  it,  because  of  the  intricacies,  disorders,  and 
falsities,  bred  in  us  by  our  fallen  condition.  "  Know 
thyself"  we  have  all  heard  was  given  out  by  the  phi- 


SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED.  229 

losophers,  as  a  first  maxim  of  wisdom.  And  if  they 
only  meant  that  so  we  are  to  get  the  facts  of  our  phi- 
losophy, they  were  right  enough,  for  these  can  be  got- 
ten, if  at  all,  only  by  self-observation.  But  natural 
faculties  and  functions  are  one  thing,  moral  states  and 
spiritual  affinities  another,  and  if  they  imagined  that 
a  human  creature  under  sin  can  know  himself,  in  this 
latter  method,  or  can  so  untwist  the  subtle  threads  of 
his  motive,  and  meaning,  and  character,  and  want  of 
character,  as  to  really  discover  the  exact  import  of  his 
condition,  they  know  little  themselves  of  what  it  is  to 
be  men.  How  much  deeper  goes  the  scripture  seer, 
when  he  protests  "  who  can  understand  his  errors, 
cleanse  thou  me  from  secret  faults."  And  again, 
"  the  heart  is  deceitful  above  all  things,  and  des- 
perately wicked,  who  can  know  it?" 

But  we  are  conscious  beings,  are  we  not,  and  what 
is  that  but  to  say  that  we  are  self-knowing  beings  ? 
But  in  simply  noting  things  as  they  pass  in  us,  which 
is  all  we  mean  by  consciousness,  we  scarcely  do  more 
than  to  just  have  a  look  on  the  huddle  of  their  transi- 
tions. We  do  not  trace  their  complexions,  causes, 
apologies,  deserts,  and  all  the  other  thousand  things 
concerned  in  their  character.  We  only  look  on  as  we 
might  on  the  passing  of  a  river,  seen  from  its  banks. 
We  examine  nothing.  Thus  if  we  speak  of  exam- 
ining our  affections,  they  are  so  variable,  and  change- 
ful, mixed  with  such  multiplicities,  and  colored  by  so 
many  crosses,  that  it  is  too  much  like  examining  the 
shadows  of  the  clouds  sailing,  two  or  three  tiers  deep, 
20 


230  SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED. 

under  the  sun.  Or  if  we  examine  our  purposes  or 
intentions,  we  shall  know  them  a  great  deal  better,  by 
just  noting  what  they  do,  and  letting  them  go ;  in- 
deed we  never  know  so  little  about  our  intentions,  and 
their  real  desert,  as  when  we  are  inspecting  or  handling 
them,  to  find  how  they  go — in  what  temper,  by  what 
motive,  and  the  like.  Again,  it  most  of  all  concerns 
us  to  know  ouf  tendencies,  which  are  the  deepest 
quality  and  drift  of  our  nature,  and  they  are  so  very 
subtle,  and  twisted  together  in  combinations  so  intri- 
cate, and  withal  so  destitute  of  harmony,  that 
nothing  less  penetrating  than  the  all-searching  eye 
of  God,  can  possibly  discover,  with  any  real  pre- 
cision, what  is  in  us.  Besides,  our  knowing  or  ex- 
amining power  itself  is  in  a  state  of  deep  spiritual 
disorder,  a  creation  that  groaneth  and  travaileth  in  its 
own  discords.  And  for  that  reason  any  effort  of  a 
man  to  adequately  know  himself,  by  a  direct  act  of 
voluntary  self-inspection,  must  be  fruitless.  He  could 
examine  God's  great  and  wide  sea  in  fact  from  shore 
to  shore  and  clean  down  to  the  bottom  ooze,  and 
judge  it  much  more  reliably,  than  he  can  the  abysses 
of  darkness,  wrath,  and  storm,  in  his  own  disordered 
and  tumultuating  spirit.  On  the  whole  it  is  plain, 
whichever  way  we  look,  or  whatever  view  we  take, 
that  God  only  is  able  really  and  discerningly  to  ex- 
amine the  human  soul  or  spirit.  No  man  thinks  it 
possible,  by  an  act  of  self-examination,  to  comprehend 
the  subtle  and  infinitely  multiform  processes  going  on 
in  his  body,  the  contractions,  the  alternating  motions, 


SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED.  231 

the  secretions,  the  circulations,  the  pains,  the  health 
whence  it  comes,  the  medicine  whither  it  goes.  But 
the  soul  is  a  creature  infinitely  more  complex,  and 
subtle,  and  mysterious,  and  as  much  less  possible  to  be 
read  and  comprehended  by  any  but  the  all-piercing  in- 
telligence of  God. 

2.  It  is  a  matter  deserving  of  our  distinct  notice, 
that  in  what  is  frequently  understood  by  self-examina- 
tion, there  is  something  mistaken  or  deceitful,  which 
needs  to  be  carefully  resisted.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
a  kind  of  artificial  state,  in  which  the  soul  is  drawn 
off  from  its  objects,  and  works,  and  its  calls  of  love 
and  sacrifice,  to  engage  itself  in  acts  of  self-inspection. 
Instead  of  doing  all  the  while,  and  only,  what  God 
requires,  it  suspends,  for  so  long  a  time,  its  work,  and 
is  occupied  with  a  study  of  its  own  figure  and  char- 
acter. The  will  is  called  off  to  be  questioned,  when 
of  course  it  is  out  of  that  engagement  where  it  other- 
wise would  be  found — even  as  a  workman  might 
withdraw  himself  for  a  day,  or  a  week,  from  his  work, 
to  examine  whether  he  is  industrious  or  not.  So  one 
falls  to  examining  his  affections,  when  of  course  his 
mind  is  introverted,  and  called  off  from  God  and  Christ, 
where  only  right  affections  have  their  object  and  rest. 
And  the  result  not  seldom  is  accordingly,  that  persons 
who  become  thoroughly  bent  down  upon  this  matter  of 
examining  their  affections,  are  doomed  to  see  them 
wither  and  even  die  out  in  the  process.  The  wonder 
then  is,  that  the  more  faithful  they  are — and  surely 
they  mean  to  be  faithful — the  darker  they  become. 


232  SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED. 

They  sigh  and  groan,  they  try  to  he  yet  more  faithful 
in  their  tests,  and  press  the  search  harder,  and  yet 
they  still  lose  ground  only  the  more  rapidly  ;  till 
finally  they  begin  to  imagine  that  God  has  utterly 
cast  them  off,  to  receive  them  no  more.  Whereas  the 
fact  is  simply  this,  that  they  have  turned  away  their 
mind  from  God,  and  of  course  do  not  see  him,  can  not 
find  him.  Then  follows  a  hard  chapter.  Where  is 
now  their  love  ?  They  do  not  see  that  they  have  any. 
How  can  they  love  God  distinctly,  when  they  are 
wholly  taken  up  with  self-inspection  ?  Their  mind 
itself  is  just  as  much  withdrawn  from  God  as  it  is  oc- 
cupied with  itself,  and  will  of  course  have  just  as 
little  outgoing  trust  and  affection,  just  as  little  of 
God's  light,  as  it  is  required  to  have,  when  it  is  all 
the  while  poring  over  itself,  and  its  own  dark 
shadow. 

Many  years  ago,  I  knew  an  excellent,  much-esteemed 
Christian  mother,  who  had  become  morbidly  intro- 
verted, and  could  not  find  her  love  to  God.  Seeing 
at  once  that  she  was  stifling  it  by  her  own  self-inspect- 
ing engrossment,  which  would  not  allow  her  to  so 
much  as  think  of  God's  loveliness,  I  said  to  her,  "  but 
you  love  your  son,  you  have  no  doubt  of  that."  "  Of 
course  I  love  him,  why  should  I  not  V  To  show  her 
then  how  she  was  killing  her  love  to  God,  I  said, 
"  but  take  one  week  now  for  the  trial,  and  make  thor- 
ough examination  of  your  love  to  your  son,  and  it  will 
be  strange  if,  at  the  end  of  the  week,  you  do  not  tell 
me  that  you  have  serious  doubt  of  it."     I   returned, 


SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED.  233 

at  the  time,  to  be  dreadfully  shocked  by  my  too  cruel 
experiment.  "  No,"  she  said,  "  I  do  not  love  him,  I 
abhor  him."  She  was  fallen  off  the  edge,  and  her 
self-examination  was  become  her  insanity  ! 

And  I  must  not  omit  to  say,  that  we  may  even  be 
so  far  engrossed,  in  this  matter  of  self-examination,  as 
to  become  thoroughly  and  even  morbidly  selfish  in  it ; 
for  what  can  be  more  selfish  than  to  be  always  boring 
into  one's  self?  No  matter  if  it  is  done  under  pre- 
text of  being  faithful  to  God,  still  if  one  wants  to  be 
faithful  only  for  his  own  sake,  as  he  certainly  will 
when  neglecting  every  thing  else  to  do  a  work  upon 
and  for  himself,  he  is  as  truly  selfish  as  if  religion  were 
wholly  out  of  the  question.  And  then  if  he  should 
perchance  bring  himself  on  through  this  selfish  struggle, 
into  the  opinion  or  verdict  of  approval,  which  he  pos- 
sibly may — for  after  all  most  men  are  likely  to  make 
out  somehow  that  they  are  right — then  he  will  only 
have  crowned  his  selfishness,  and  established  the  de- 
ceit that  he  will  probably  carry  with  him  to  his  grave. 
No  character  is  more  hopeless,  as  regards  the  matter 
of  review  and  rectification,  than  one  that  has  been 
smouldering  whole  years,  in  a  process  of  self-devoted, 
self-scrutinizing,  introverted  life,  and  has  come  out  in 
the  opinion  that  he  is  assuredly  right.  The  conclusion 
reached  is  the  more  certainly  irreversible,  in  the  fact 
that  he  is  wrong ;  and  is  reached,  not  by  any  act  of 
faith,  but  by  a  merely  human,  and  for  the  most  part 
selfish  process  of  spiritual  incubation,  separated  from 
God. 

20* 


234  SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED. 

3.  It  is  important  also,  as  regards  a  right  impres- 
sion of  this  subject,  to  observe  how  much  is  implied  in 
a  hearty  willingness  or  desire  to  have  God  examine 
us  and  prove  us.  If  we  undertake  to  examine  our- 
selves in  our  own  power,  it  may  be  to  make  out  a 
case  for  ourselves,  or,  as  sometimes  happens,  in  a 
morbid  state  of  depression,  to  make  out  a  case  against 
ourselves.  False  influences  in  all  complexions  black 
and  white  assail  us,  and  go  into  the  endeavor  with  us. 
But  if  we  are  ready  to  have  God  examine  us,  and 
bring  us  to  an  exactly  right  verdict,  that  is  a  state  so 
simple,  so  honest,  so  impartial,  so  protected  against 
every  false  influence,  that  we  scarcely  need  to  look 
any  further ;  for  it  is  already  clear  that  we  are  in  a 
right  mind,  ready  to  receive  the  truth,  seeking  after 
the  truth,  waiting  on  God  for  the  discovery,  and  pre- 
pared to  admit  his  holy  will  whatever  it  may  be.  In- 
deed I  might  even  go  so  far  as  to  say,  that  a  soul 
breaking  forth  naturally  in  the  prayer — Examine  me, 
O  Lord,  and  prove  me,  try  my  reins  and  my  heart, 
need  examine  or  inquire  no  farther ;  it  is  already 
found  to  be  in  God's  friendship,  and  is  sealed  with  the 
witness  of  his  acceptance. 

The  only  true  and  safe  conception  then  of  the  duty 

'  called  self-examination  is,  not  that  we  are  to  examine 

ourselves  by  our  own  self-inspection  merely,  but  that 

we  are  to  be  rather  examined  and  proved  by  God. 

And  this  brings  me — 

4.  To  the  point  that  there  is  a  way  of  coming  at  the 
verdict  of  God,  whatever  it  may  be.     None  will  doubt 


SELF-EXAMINATION    EXAMINED.  235 

the  superior  ability  of  God  to  examine  our  state,  and 
know  what  it  is,  compared  with  any  ability  we  have 
to  investigate  ourselves,  but  they  will  see  no  possi- 
bility of  making  the  judgment  of  God,  in  our  case, 
available.  How  can  we  know,  they  will  ask,  what  the 
verdict  of  God  is  respecting  us,  and  if  it  be  true,  as  it 
must  be,  how  can  it  be  of  any  benefit  to  us  ?  Because, 
I  answer,  God  designs  to  give  us,  and  has  planned  to 
give  us  always,  the  benefit  of  his  own  knowledge  of 
our  state.  That  we  should  never  be  able  to  make  out 
an  accurate  or  reliable  judgment  of  ourselves,  by  mere 
self-inspection,  is  taken  for  granted.  God  has  never 
set  us  on  that  footing  as  regards  the  conduct  of  our 
lives.  Many  or  indeed  the  general  mass  of  mankind 
have  only  the  smallest  degree  of  power,  in  the  way  of 
reflective  exercise.  They  are  little  exercised  in  this 
way — almost  none  but  philosophers  are  thus  exer- 
cised— their  lives  flow  outward  in  a  way  wholly  ob- 
jective, just  as  the  springs  flow  outward  from  under 
the  hills  and  never  go  back  to  retrace  their  courses 
and  inspect  their  origin.  Therefore,  God  never  puts 
us  on  the  work  of  testing  ourselves.  He  expects  to 
do  this  for  us,  and  if  we  will  take  his  judgment,  al- 
ways to  allow  us  the  advantage  of  it.  We  are  not 
complete  beings  or  beings  perfectly  equipped  for  ac- 
tion apart  from  God.  We  are  complete  only  in  him. 
He  is,  and  is  ever  to  be,  our  light.  We  are  to  know 
ourselves  in  and  through  him,  just  as  we  are  to  do  our 
will  in  his  will,  and  have  our  majesty  in  his  majesty, 
reigning  with  him  in  his  throne. 


236  SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED. 

If  then  we  are  in  a  truly  right  state  towards  Him, 
he  will  know  it,  and  he  has  planned  to  give  us  witness, 
infallible  and  immediate  witness  of  the  fact.  For  as 
unbelief  and  wrong  separate  the  soul  forthwith 
from  God,  so  where  there  is  no  such  separation,  or 
where  the  separating  force  is  abated,  God  is  imme- 
diately revealed  in  the  soul's  consciousness.  It 
abideth  in  the  light,  it  recognizes  God  as  a  divine 
other,  present  within.  Even  as  the  Saviour  himself 
declared — "  but  ye  see  me,"  and  again — "  I  will  mani- 
fest myself  unto  him."  God  then  is  manifested  al- 
ways in  the  consciousness  of  them  that  love  him,  and 
are  right  towards  him.  They  need  not  go  into  any 
curious  self-examination,  that  will  only  confuse  and 
obscure  the  witness.  They  will  know  God  by  an  im- 
mediate knowledge  or  revelation.  They  will  have  his 
spirit  witnessing  with  theirs.  They  will  have  the  tes- 
timony that  they  please  God.  In  their  simple  love 
they  will  know  God's  love  to  them ;  for  he  that  loveth 
knoweth  God.  For  a  man  then  to  be  obliged  to  ex- 
amine himself,  and  study  and  cypher  over  himself  to 
find  out  whether  he  is  a  child  of  God  or  not,  is  no 
good  sign  ;  for  if  he  is,  he  should  have  a  witness  more 
immediate,  and  should  want  no  such  information  at 
all.  God  knows  him  perfectly,  and  if  God  has  re- 
vealed himself  in  the  consciousness,  if  he  has  the. wit- 
ness of  God  and  the  testimony  that  he  pleases  God, 
what  more  can  he  have  ?  and  if  he  has  not  this  at  all, 
what  can  he  have,  or  what,  by  self-scrutiny,  find  to 
make  good  the  want  of  it  ? 


SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED.  237 

But  we  have  a  great  many  defects  and  errors  and 
bad  qualities  lurking  in  us,  and  here  again  we  shall 
discover  that  God  has  planned  to  bring  us  into  a  per- 
ception of  these,  and  set  us  in  the  same  judgment  of 
them  that  he  has  himself.  As  the  fining  pot  is  for 
silver,  and  the  furnace  for  gold,  so  the  Lord  trieth  the 
hearts.  It  is  wonderful  to  see  with  what  skill  God 
has  adjusted  all  our  experiences,  in  this  mortal  life,  so 
as  to  make  us  sensible  of  our  errors  and  defects.  As 
the  invisible  ink  is  brought  out  in  a  distinct  color,  by 
holding  what  is  written  to  the  fire,  so  God  brings  out 
all  our  faults  and  our  sins  by  the  scorches  of  expe- 
rience through  which  we  are  ever  passing  in  the  fiery 
trials  of  life.  If  we  are  proud,  he  has  a  way  to  make 
us  see  it,  and  to  break  down  our  pride.  If  we 
cherish  any  subtle  grudge,  or  animosity,  he  will  some- 
how call  it  out  and  make  us  see  it.  If  we  are  selfish, 
or  covetous,  or  jealous,  or  frivolous,  or  captious,  or 
self-indulgent,  or  sensual,  or  self-confident,  or  fanatical, 
or  self-righteous,  or  partial,  or  obstinate,  or  prejudiced, 
or  uncharitable,  or  censorious — whatever  fault  we  have 
in  us,  whether  it  be  in  the  mind,  or  the  head,  or  the 
body,  or  I  might  almost  say  the  bones,  no  matter  how 
subtle,  or  how  ingeniously  covered  it  may  be,  he  has 
us  in  the  furnace  of  trial  and  correction,  where  he  is 
turning  us  round  and  round,  lifting  us  in  prosperity, 
crushing  us  in  adversity,  subduing  us  with  afflictions, 
tempting  out  our  faults  and  then  chastising  them, 
humbling  us,  correcting  us,  softening,  tempering, 
soothing,   fortifying,  refining,   healing,    and   so   man- 


238  SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED. 

aging  ns,  as  to  detect  all  our  drossy  and  bad  qualities, 
and  separate  them  from  us.  He  sits  as  a  refiner  and 
purifier  of  silver,  and  allows  nothing  to  escape  either 
his  discovery  or  our  correction.  No  self-examination 
we  could  make  would  discover,  at  all,  what  he  is  con- 
tinually bringing  to  the  light,  and  exposing  to  our  de- 
tection. The  very  plan  of  our  life  is  so  to  handle  us 
that  we  shall  come  into  the  full  advantage  of  his 
perfect  knowledge  of  our  state  and  character.  lie  is 
proving  us  at  every  turn,  making  us  apprized  of  our- 
selves, trying  even  the  reins  and  the  heart,  that  our 
most  secret  things  may  be  revealed. 

It  can  not  then  be  said  that  there  is  no  way  of 
making  God's  examination  of  us  available ;  for  he  is, 
all  the  while,  and  in  every  possible  manner,  giving  us 
advantage  of  it.  If  the  trial  of  our  faith  is  precious, 
he  for  just  that  reason  leaves  it  not  to  us  alone  to 
make  the  trial,  but  his  plan  is,  knowing  what  we  are 
and  what  we  want,  to  conduct  every  point  of  the  trial 
himself. 

I  will  only  add,  and  this  perhaps  I  ought  to  add, 
that  if  there  be  any  legitimate  place  for  self-examina- 
tion, it  is  in  the  field  last  mentioned,  where  we  go  into 
self-inspection  just  to  discover  our  faults,  and  the  sins 
that  require  to  be  forsaken  or  put  away.  This  would 
be  a  very  honest  kind  of  endeavor,  and  I  see  no 
objection  to  it,  save  that  it  is  very  likely,  when  pur- 
sued too  closely,  to  produce  a  morbid  state,  and  sink 
the  soul  in  the  disabilities  of  fatal  discouragement. 
No  prudent  Christian,  therefore,  will  even  dare  to  set 


SELF-EXAMINATION    EXAMINED.  289 

himself  down  upon  the  discovery  of  his  sins,  and 
make  it  his  chief  engagement..  He  can  not  be  always 
looking  down  this  gulf,  and  not  wither  in  a  prospect 
so  ungenial.  He  must  have  a  little  gospel  somehow, 
and  if  he  does  not  have  a  great  deal,  so  much  sin  will 
starve  him  to  death.  It  will  generally  be  much  better 
to  just  let  God  put  him  on  such  ways  of  discovery 
here,  as  will  be  best  for  him.  But  this  is  not  what 
most  disciples  go  to  self-examination,  or  by  their 
teachers  are  put  on  self-examination,  for ;  they  are  set 
to  it,  not  to  find  out  their  faults,  and  correct  them,  but 
to  settle  and  try  out  their  Christian  evidences.  Our 
great  and  godly  Edwards  writes  his  book  on  the  Affec- 
tions, for  exactly  this,  and  taking  his  book  for  what  he 
verily  thought  was  to  be  the  use  of  it,  I  as  verily  think 
it  one  of  the  most  mistaken  books  that  a  good  and 
saintly  man  was  ever  allowed  to  write — it  is  a  kind  of 
morbid  anatomy  for  the  mind.  And  we  have  hun- 
dreds of  others  in  the  same  strain.  Evidences  of 
piety  are  a  great  deal  more  likely  to  be  hidden,  or 
ruled  out  in  that  way,  than  they  are  to  be  found,  and 
the  most  sensitively  delicate  disciple  is  the  one  that 
will  suffer.  It  is  well  if  he  does  not  push  himself  into 
spiritual  distraction  by  it.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
evidences  are  sought  in  this  manner,  that  class  of 
persons  who  are  commonly  finding  what  they  look 
for,  will  be  almost  certain  to  fish  up  the  evidences 
they  want.  This  whole  method  of  self-examination, 
to  settle  the  question  of  christian  evidence,  is  decep- 
tive, unscriptural,  and  bitterly  injurious. 


240  SELF- EX  A  MI  NATION    EXAMINED. 

And  it  is  injurious,  I  must  add,  not  only  in  mis- 
leading, but  also  in  hindering  the  disciple.  How 
can  he  get  on  with  any  sort  of  growth,  when  totally 
occupied  in  the  matter  of  self-inspection  ?  The  very 
engagement  becomes  a  dry  and  weary  fumbling  of 
his  own  state.  Even  as  the  lad  I  knew,  who  had 
undertaken  to  grow  a  patch  of  watermelons,  looked 
to  see- them  ripen  long  before  they  were  grown  ;  went 
to  them  every  day  and  examined  and  tested  them, 
pressing  his  thumb  down  hard  upon  them,  to  see  if 
the  rind  would  snap  ;  for  that  was  to  be  the  sign 
when  they  were  ripe.  But  the  poor  things,  under  so 
many  indentations,  fell  to  rotting,  and  did  not  ripen 
at  all.  They  were  examined  to  death.  God's  winds, 
and  rains,  and  suns,  and  dews,  were  doing  a  much 
better  examination  upon  them — with  the  advantage 
that  it  gave  them  time  to  grow,  and  a  chance  to  nat- 
urally live. 

The  real  wisdom  of  the  christian,  then,  for  this  is 
the  conclusion  to  which  we  are  brought,  is  that  he 
shall  be  more  natural ;  not  facing  round  as  he  walks, 
to  examine  the  tracks  he  makes,  but  asking  the  way 
to  Zion  with  his  face  thitherward.  This  dismal  re- 
troversion is  the  bane  of  character,  giving  it  a  twisted 
and  hard  look,  a  sorely  and  even  selfishly  circum- 
spective look.  You  see  at  a  glance,  how  often,  that 
the  man  or  woman  writes  a  diary,  and  puts  down  all 
the  frames  passed  through,  keeping  them  in  tally,  and 
considering  the  figure  they  make.  Not  that  every 
man  who  writes  a  diary  does  it  of  course  in  this  self- 


SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED.  211 

regarding  way.  George  Fox  writes  two  heavy  vol- 
umes of  diary,  and  after  he  has  fairly  opened  his 
christian  story,  from  its  birthday  beginning,  he 
scarcely  so  much  as  alludes  to  any  frame  of  feeling, 
or  score  of  evidence  in  his  life,  but  simply  puts  his 
face  right  onward,  telling  where  he  went,  and  whom 
he  saw,  and  what  in  God's  name  he  did.  He  never 
once  intimates  a  misgiving,  and  when  he  comes  to 
die,  he  is  so  little  concerned  for  it,  that  in  what  is 
called  his  death,  he  simply  forgot  to  live !  Such  a 
disciple  grows  less  conscious  and  not  more  conscious 
in  his  habit,  and  there  is  such  plain,  forward-going 
simplicity  in  him,  that  he  visibly  bears  the  stamp  of 
God's  approving,  not  of  his  own  self-approving. 

God  forbid,  my  hearers,  that  in  ruling  out  so  much 
that  has  been  held  in  sacred  esteem  and  reverence, 
and  carefully  observed  and  practiced  by  the  faithful 
and  godly  in  Christ  Jesus,  I  should  seem  willing  to 
encourage  lightness  and  looseness  of  life.  Is  it  a  light 
thing  to  be  said,  or  only  a  true,  that  a  man  does  not 
want  to  examine  himself  to  find  whether  he  is  cold  or 
hungry,  whether  he  loves  his  child,  whether  he  is  an 
honest  man  ?  No,  the  sturdy  fact  is  that  all  such  an- 
swers sought  come  and  ought  to  come  without  seeking, 
and  can  only  come  of  themselves  in  simply  being  true. 
And  if  they  do  not,  if  a  man  has  to  make  a  case  on 
the  question  of  his  honesty,  he  is  very  certainly  a  good 
deal  less  honest  than  he  should  be.  No,  my  friends, 
the  thing  wanted  here,  and  that  which  only  yields  the 
true    evidence,    is    the    genuine    down-rightness    of 

n 


242  SELF-EXAMINATION   EXAMINED. 

our  life — that  it  covers  no  shams,  gets  up  no  mock 
virtues  and  no  pretexts  of  proceeding  scientifically, 
but  goes  right  on,  putting  its  face  the  way  it  goes,  and 
not  backwards.  It  is  consciously  right,  and  God  is 
consciously  yielding  it  his  immediate  testimony.  And 
let  there  be  no  doubt  of  this,  as  if  it  were  a  way  not 
safe.  God  will  make  it  safe  as  he  only  can.  And  if 
you  are  afraid  that  some  looseness  may  creep  in,  or 
some  false  hope  steal  you  away,  be  upon  your  watch, 
for  watching  is  one  thing,  and  self-examination  a  very 
different  thing.  Watch  and  pray  that  you  may  not 
enter  into  temptation,  and  let  the  prayer  be  this, 
which  God  will  never  disregard — "  Search  me,  O 
God,  and  know  my  heart,  try  me  and  know  my 
thoughts,  and  see  if  there  be  any  wicked  way  in  me, 
and  lead  me  in  the  way  everlasting."  Then  forward, 
forward  in  that  way. 


XIII. 

HOW  TO  BE  A  CHRISTIAN  IN  TRADE, 


"  Then  he  that  had  received  the  five  talents  went  and  traded  with 
the  same,  and  made  them  other  five  talents." — Malth.  25:   16. 

In  these  words  of  parable,  the  Saviour  had  proba- 
bly no  thought  of  expressing  his  formal  approbation 
of  trade,  as  a  human  occupation  ;  but  we  only  see  the 
more  convincingly,  in  what  he  says,  that  he  has  not 
even  a  thought  of  disapprobation  concerning  it.  His 
man  of  iive  talents  he  lets  go  and  trade  with  the 
same,  and  regards  it  as  a  legitimate  or  even  com- 
mendable success,  that  he  returns,  after  a  time,  with 
his  little  capital  doubled  by  his  profits.  Taking,  then, 
his  words,  as  a  verdict  for  trade  and  trade  profits,  I 
propose  a  discourse  on  this  particular  calling  or  en- 
gagement, showing — I.  The  fair  possibility  of  being; 
and  II.  How  to  be,  a  Christian  in  trade. 

I  undertake  the  subject,  as  I  ought  perhaps  to  say, 
because  of  the  immense  number  of  persons  who  are  in 
this  occupation,  and  are  drawing  their  livelihood  from 
it ;  and  especially  because  of  the  great  number  of 
young  men  who  are  just  about  going  into  it,  or  look- 
ing to  it  with  more  or  less  desire,  as  the  probable 
engagement  of  their  lives.     That  I  can  raise  any  im- 

(243) 


244  HOW    TO   BE    A    CHRISTIAN 

pressions,  in  minds  a  long  time  submitted  to  its 
temptations,  which  will  have  the  power  to  mend  what 
moral  damage  and  disaster  they  have  suffered,  I 
hardly  dare  to  hope.  But  the  very  large  class  of 
young  persons  just  entering,  or  just  about  to  enter, 
this  field — some  of  them  getting  under  sinister  influ- 
ences even  beforehand,  from  the  false  impressions  they 
have  taken  up — these  I  do  hope  to  set  in  juster  modes 
of  thought,  and  more  christian  ways  of  expectation, 
that  will  steady  their  engagement  and  make  it  safe. 
Some  of  them  are  going  into  it  with  a  purpose  wholly 
ingenuous,  and  really  meaning  to  be  Christian  men, 
if  possible,  in  their  now  chosen  occupation.  Others,  I 
very  well  know,  are  a  little  poisoned  already  by  cer- 
tain false  notions  they  have  taken  up,  and  allowed  to 
sharpen  their  appetite.  They  do  not  propose  to  earn 
their  living  in  it,  but  they  are  going  into  it  to  get 
their  living  without  labor,  out  of  the  profits  they  make 
by  their  transactions  of  buying  and  selling.  And 
this  word  profits  means,  they  think,  no  reward  of  ser- 
vice done  to  the  public,  but  what  they  are  to  get  by 
their  sharpness.  They  expect  success  just  as  any 
specially  sharp  tool  is  visibly  expecting  to  cut.  Under 
this  profligate  and  really  degraded  impression,  run- 
ning, alas  !  how  very  low  in  multitudes  of  cases,  they 
hurry  in  to  make,  as  they  say,  their  fortune.  Trade, 
in  their  view,  is  illicit,  and  they  go  to  it  in  fact  as  a 
reputable  kind  of  larceny.  They  expect  sharp  practice, 
or  to  profit  by  getting  unfair  advantages.  They  would 
not  say  it,  and  probably  they  do  not  know  it,  but  they 


IN   TRADE.  245 

nevertheless  really  expect  to  thrive  by  a  strictly 
filching  operation,  which  operation  they  call  trade. 
Now  these  false  impressions  of  trade,  by  which  so 
many  young  persons  going  into  it  are  so  dismally  cor- 
rupted, are  gotten  up,  I  grieve  to  say,  largely  by  the 
sophistries  and  shallow  detractions  of  christian  people, 
who  ought  to  know  better.  What,  they  ask,  is  the 
very  operation  of  merchandising  but  a  drill  exercise 
in  selfishness  ?  And  what  is  the  law  of  price  or  profit, 
but  the  law  of  possibility ;  viz.,  to  ask  the  highest 
price  the  market  will  bear,  be  the  cost  what  it  may,  or 
the  value  what  it  may.  What  too  is  current  price 
itself,  but  a  market  graduation,  settled  by  the  con- 
trary bulling  and  bearing  of  two  selfishnesses,  that 
of  the  sellers  and  that  of  the  buyers  %  And  then 
what  is  the  trader  doing  but  feeling  after,  all  the 
while,  and  having  it  even  for  his  life,  to  wait  on,  the 
adjustments  of  selfishness,  even  as  barometers  wait  on 
the  air- waves,  and  their  fluctuating  levels? — which 
waiting  always  on  the  unsteady,  unsteadies  even  the 
sense  of  principle.  Besides  the  very  working  of  a  bar- 
gain— what  is  it  but  an  adroit  wrestling  match  ;  a  talk- 
ing up  of  the  market  and  the  goods  perhaps  on  one  side, 
and  a  talking  down  on  the  other,  or  a  magnifying  by 
shrewd  silences  that  is  even  more  cunningly  and  skill- 
fully insincere  ?  There  is  besides,  how  often,  what  a  con- 
trary play  and  parry  of  opposing  magnetisms;  the  sell- 
ing airs  and  plausibilities  holding  a  match  with  the  buy- 
ing airs  and  plausibilities,  and  each  watching  each,  even 
as  an  eagle  watches  the  prey,  to  find  how  the  game  is 
21* 


246  HOW   TO   BE    A   CHRISTIAN 

turning,  or  what  will  turn  it.  How  often  also  is  it 
testified,  that  untruths  are  a  staple  matter  here,  and 
so  far  necessary  that  a  clerk  or  apprentice,  who  is 
known  to  have  let  a  bargain  slip  for  want  of  a  mere 
lie,  will  be  almost  sure  to  lose  his  place,  as  one  who 
has  proved  his  incompetency.  By  so  many  poisons, 
and  chemistries  of  poison,  it  is  imagined  that  trade  is 
inevitably  saturated.  Possibly  one  may  be  in  it,  and 
keep  the  repute  of  a  Christian.  But  how  many  nom- 
inally christian  merchants  will  even  maintain  it  as  by 
argument,  that  a  Sunday  goodness,  a  churchly  feeling, 
or  prayer-meeting  mood,  is  about  the  utmost  grace  of 
religion  permitted  them.  The  man  of  trade,  they  will 
say,  is  a  man  sandwiched  between  such  mere  times  of  ob- 
servance, and  the  downright  selfishness  of  his  engage- 
ments. How  few  young  men  going  into  trade,  under 
such  impressions,  will  expect  to  make  their  life  a 
properly  christian  life  in  it.  And  of  those  already  in 
it,  not  one  can  be  a  true  living  disciple,  save  under  a 
wholly  different  set  of  impressions.  Moved  by  this 
conviction,  I  now  undertake — 

1.  To  show  that  there  is  no  necessary  moral  detri- 
ment in  trade  ;  that  there  is  quite  as  good  a  chance 
of  christian  living  in  it  as  in  any  other  kind  of  en- 
gagement. 

And  here  I  put  forward,  at  the  front  of  all  that 
comes  after,  the  very  certain  fact  that  there  have  been 
good  christians  in  trade ;  and  if  that  be  so,  then  it  fol- 
lows by  a  very  short  argument,  that  what  has  been 
can  be — that  is,  can  be  again  and  often.     And  what 


IN   TRADE.  247 

examples  of  this  fact  do  we  meet  with  in  the 
records  of  christian  living ;  such  as  the  well-known, 
much  honored  father  Markoe,  the  merchant  saint  of 
New  York ;  such  as  our  own  high-working,  nobly 
christian,  trading  brother,  A.  M.  Collins.  Or  such 
again  as  the  world-famous  British  man  of  God  and 
merchant,  Samuel  Budgett.  These  I  know  are  super- 
lative examples,  and  yet  we  have  hundreds  in  the 
world's  record  to  match  them,  and  thousands  in  a 
grade  only  one  degree  below,  and  millions  in  a  really 
honorable  grade  of  worth  and  christian  respect  that  is 
only  a  little  more  common  still.  There  is,  in  fact,  no 
human  employment  that  has  yielded  better,  and  pro- 
portionally more  numerous  examples  of  christian  liv- 
ing than  trade.  No  matter  if  there  be  some  disad- 
vantages and  hindrances  to  piety  in  it,  the  same  is 
true  of  every  other  kind  of  business  which  can  be 
named.  That  most  tenderly  beautiful  saint  of  God, 
the  Quaker  Woolman,  began  with  merchandise,  and 
being  apprehensive  lest  he  might  find  it  "  attended 
with  much  cumber,"  drew  off  to  another  occupation 
that  was  like  to  be  more  simply  industrious  in  the 
sense  of  labor,  viz.,  that  of  a  tailor ;  but  he  left  that 
even  more  speedily,  because  the  call  of  God  that  was 
on  him  put  him  in  silent  affinity  with  another,  which 
I  have  no  doubt  was  to  him  more  wholesome  than 
either  of  his  two  former  callings,  because  more  con- 
genial to  the  sacred  bent  of  his  nature.  Otherwise  he 
could  have  been  as  good  a  christian  in  either  as  in 
that. 


218  HOW   TO    BE    A    CHRISTIAN 

Sometimes  it  is  urged  as  a  proof  of  the  anti-christian 
affinities  of  trade,  that  the  man  who  gets  deeply  en- 
gaged in  it  becomes  eager  and  sharp,  dropping  out  the 
soft  amenities  and  charities,  and  carrying  his  points  of 
mercantile  justice,  with  a  peremptory  squareness  and 
mechanical  hardness  not  pleasant  to  encounter.  That 
exactly  was  the  accusation  most  commonly  set  against 
two  of  the  distinguished  characters  just  named,  Mr. 
Collins  and  Mr.  Budgett.  And  the  reason  was  wholly 
to  their  credit.  They  were  never  known  to  veer  by  a 
hair  from  integrity  in  any  transaction  of  business,  but 
they  would  have  veered  a  hundred  times  a  day,  falling 
into  a  muddle  where  all  distinctions  of  principle  are 
lost,  if  they  had  not  done  their  trade  as  trade,  under 
the  law  of  trade,  and  reserved  their  charities — all 
their  sympathies,  allowances,  mitigations,  merciful  ac- 
commodations— for  a  separate  chapter  of  life.  But 
here  it  would  come  out  how  surely,  that  no  tenderest, 
most  simple-hearted  child  was  more  easily  moved 
in  his  compassions,  or  more  unstinted  whether  in 
gifts  or  favors.  And  for  just  this  reason  it  is,  that 
so  many  of  the  best  and  most  valuable  christian  dis- 
ciples we  have,  are  such  as  come  up  out  of  the  walks 
of  trade.  They  do  not  dawdle  in  their  life-work,  but 
they  mean  business.  They  know  how  to  engineer 
operations,  how  to  move  with  alertness,  and  turn  their 
hand  nimbly  as  things  require,  keeping  every  thing 
still  in  the  training  of  order  and  practical  system ; 
playing  in,  under  these,  and  as  it  were  to  fill  them  out, 
all  most  practical  mercies  and  tenderest  graces.     So 


IN   TRADE.  249 

that  if  we  want  the  best  engineering  of  counsel,  and 
the  most  energetic  flexibilities  of  movement,  we  are 
more  likely  to  get  our  supply  from  the  class  of  disci- 
ples in  trade,  than  from  any  other.  Operations  are 
their  study,  and  they  get  limbered  in  it  for  all  most 
cautiously  safe  and  practically  efficient  operations,  in 
religion. 

The  next  point  to  which  I  ask  your  attention,  is 
that  all  apprehensions  of  a  specially  harmful  exposure 
in  trade  are  mistaken.  What  it  calls  profits  are  just 
as  truly  earnings,  as  any  of  the  fruits  of  hand  labor. 
For  it  is  a  calling  grounded  in  nature,  even  as  mining, 
or  agriculture,  is  conceived  to  be.  Thus  one  clime 
produces  ice,  another  oranges  and  figs,  another  sugar 
and  coffee,  another  cotton,  another  furs.  In  like  man- 
ner iron,  gold,  silver,  salt,  and  coal,  are  distributed 
locally  in  spots,  on  different  or  distant  shores.  Medi- 
cines are  sprinkled  here  and  there,  some  in  one  region 
and  some  in  another.  And  then  all  these  supplies 
and  comforts  of  the  different  regions  must  be  gathered 
by  the  merchants,  transported  to  the  parts  where  they 
may  be  wanted,  distributed  into  small  parcels,  and 
sold  out  to  customers  for  use.  All  which  requires  a 
great  risk  of  capital,  great  contriving,  long  corres- 
pondences, expensive  transportations,  adding  as  much 
and  real  comfort  to  the  uses  of  life,  as  if  the  articles 
were  drawn  out  of  the  soil  by  the  hand  labor  of  the 
persons  engaged.  They  do,  in  fact,  a  work  very  much 
like  that  of  the  rain,  or  the  rain  clouds,  which  instead 
of  leaving  the  world  to  be  watered  by  waterspouts 


250  HOW   TO   BE    A   CHRISTIAN 

falling  here  or  there  once  in  a  thousand  years,  take  up 
the  water  that  is  wanted  in  parts  remote  from  the  sea, 
carrying  it  otf  thither  by  their  wind-sails,  and  there, 
making  small  the  drops  for  a  gentle  and  general  dis- 
tribution, let  it  fall  on  the  ground,  sprinkling  it  all 
over.  These  rain-clouds  are  the  merchants  of  the  sky, 
and  trade  is  distribution  in  a  like  beneficent  way. 
Trade  in  things  is  the  kinsman  of  tradition  in  facts,  as 
any  one  may  see  on  the  faces  of  the  words,  and  there 
is  a  commerce  of  delivery  and  distribution  in  both, 
that  fulfills  a  like  beneficence.  And  if  any  one  doubts 
whether  the  goods  distributed  can  be  rightly  sold  for 
a  profit,  or  at  more  than  their  cost,  let  him  go  without 
these  conveniences  of  trade  and  its  distributions  for  a 
few  months,  let  every  product  stay  at  home,  every  box 
and  bale  unbroken,  every  piece  uncut,  and  he  will 
begin  to  understand  what  work  trade  is  doing,  how 
real  it  is,  how  deserving  of  profit. 

But  granting  there  may  be  some  service  rendered 
by  trade,  what  price  shall  be  fitly  paid  for  it,  and  to 
what  is  this  matter  of  price  left,  but  to  the  rapacity  of 
the  merchant  ?  Just  contrary  to  that,  in  the  common 
articles  of  traffic,  almost  nothing  is  left  to  him  ;  for  he 
can  not  much  advance  upon  the  current  price,  which 
is  always  determined,  so  to  speak,  by  the  common  vote 
of  the  market.  A  conspiracy  may  be  gotten  up  by  some 
merchant,  to  buy  the  market  bare  of  some  necessary 
article,  or  he  may  do  it  as  a  single  operator  by  him- 
self, but  then  he  ceases  from  any  thing  which  can  be 
properly  called  trade,  and   becomes   a  robber.      His 


IN*    TRADE.  251 

very  operation  casts  off  the  laws  of  trade,  and  prefers 
the  chances  of  plunder.  Or,  again,  it  may  some- 
times happen  that  a  blight,  a  frost,  a  tire,  disturbs  the 
ratio  of  supply,  and  gives  opportunity  for  exactions 
that  are  cruelly  extortious.  Doubtless  it  is  sometimes 
possible,  in  such  a  case,  to  carry  prices  up  to  the  pitch 
of  starvation,  but  the  man  who  does  it  is  sure  to  dis- 
cover, at  last,  that  he  has  offended  against  the  laws  of 
trade  at  bitter  cost  to  himself.  Who  will  come  to 
him  for  trade,  after  he  has  shown  himself  a  pirate? 
Much  wiser,  and  in  how  much  better  keeping  with 
the  laws  and  possibilities  of  trade,  was  the  course  of 
that  rough  lumberman  of  a  large  mountain  village  of 
California,  who  could  say  to  his  townsmen  driven  out 
by  a  fire  which,  in  a  single  hour,  had  swept  every 
thing  bare — "  here  is  your  material,  give  me  just 
what  price  I  have  been  receiving,  no  more,  and  it  is 
yours."  This  man,  be  it  noted,  was  the  man,  after  all, 
who  best  fulfilled  the  laws  of  trade. 

Ordinarily  the  transactions  of  merchandise  en- 
counter no  such  temptation.  The  undertaking  is  to 
sell  under  and  by  the  laws  of  current  price;  and  the 
productions  of  agriculture,  and  the  wages  of  hand 
labor,  go  by  exactly  the  same  law.  Nor  is  it  any  ob- 
jection that  current  price  is  being  all  the  while  adjust- 
ed, by  the  contrary  pull  of  two  selfishnesses,  for  it  is 
even  doubtful  whether  two  benevolences  could  do  it 
any  more  justly.  The  seller  does  not  settle  the  price, 
and  the  buyer  does  not  settle  it.  It  is  finally  settled 
in  despite  of    both,  and  by  those  higher   laws  that 


252  HOW   TO   BE    A   CHRISTIAN 

make  the  contrary  pull  of  the  parties  about  as  good  a 
measure  of  want  and  supply  as  can  be  contrived,  even 
though — perhaps  because — it  settles  the  price  at  just 
that  point  which  is  disliked  by  both.  And  if  men 
were  angels,  there  would  really  be  no  likelier  and 
juster  method  than  to  let  supply  and  demand  work  at 
the  case  each  on  its  side,  and  make  the  prices  vibrate 
by  their  oscillations,  in  just  this  manner.  There  is 
now  and  then  a  case,  it  is  true,  where  some  merchant 
very  nearly  fixes  current  price,  for  the  time,  under  the 
autocratic  principle,  putting  it  down  thus  and  thus  for 
himself;  which  is  understood  to  be  the  manner  to  a 
principal  degree  of  a  certain  immense  trading-house, 
too  vast  to  have  a  rival,  in  the  city  of  New  York. 
But  even  this  almost  dictator  of  prices  has  a  very 
close  eye  to  what  is  possible,  and  wdiat  is  not,  some- 
times marking  up  his  prices,  and  sometimes  marking 
them  down  ;  consenting  virtually  to  the  fact,  that 
price  is  not  by  him,  but  by  what  after  all  is  above 
him. 

But  what  shall  Ave  say  of  trading  under  variable 
prices,  and  practicing  on  the  customer  accordingly  as 
he  will  bear  it.  The  guage  of  price  is  not,  in  that 
case,  in  the  goods,  but  only  in  the  unquestioning  facility 
of  the  customer — a  way  of  trade  that  even  proposes 
to  fleece  all  the  customers  best  entitled  to  favor  and 
protection  by  their  generosity,  and  make  up  the  gen- 
eral score  of  the  profits  at  their  cost.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  a  very  hard,  forbidding  wTay  of  trade  to  main- 
tain prices  absolutely  invariable.     It  is  even  doubtful 


IN   TRADE.  253 

whether  variation,  within  a  certain  small  range,  may 
not  best  serve  the  flexibilities  of  courtesy,  and  best 
serve  the  interest  of  both  seller  and  buyer.  Possibly 
some  very  great  millionaire  of  trade  may  set  his  own 
prices,  and  mark  off  his  goods  to  be  sold  only  by  the 
mark.  But  it  must  be  said  in  justice  to  the  small 
trader,  that  he  very  often  can  not  well  ascertain  what 
the  current  price  really  is,  and  is  even  obliged  to  do  it 
by  feeling  of  his  customer,  and  giving  a  certain  faith 
to  representations  brought  him  thus,  of  what  is  going 
on  in  the  street.  Perhaps  the  current  price  itself  has 
veered  a  little  since  yesterday.  But  this  is  a  very  dif- 
ferent thing  from  having  no  price  at  all,  and  going  for 
such  amount  of  prey  as  the  customer  will  suffer. 
That  is  not  trade,  and  there  is  no  bad  effect  of  trade  to 
be  thought  of  in  it.  It  is  the  way  of  a  knave,  or  a 
jockey,  and  these  are  not  included  under  any  proper 
definition  of  trade. 

As  little  room  is  there,  under  any  thing  properly 
called  trade,  for  what  many  seem  to  regard  as  the  nec- 
essary skill,  in  raising  color  by  glosses  of  false  recom- 
mendation, or  by  small  lies  sprinkled  in  for  the  due 
stimulation  of  the  customer.  That  is  not  an  accom- 
plishment belonging  to  the  genuine  operation  of  trade, 
but  only  to  the  low-lived,  inbred  habit  of  the  man. 
Such  arts  I  know  are  practiced,  but  never  to  ad- 
vantage. They  are  sometimes  even  a  fatal  hindrance 
to  success  ;  for  as  certainly  as  what  is  contemptible 
carries  contempt,  the  man  who  is  willing  to  sell  his 
integrity  with  liis  goods,  will  appeal*  to  be  just  the 
22 


254  HOW    TO   BE   A   CHRISTIAN 

character  he  is.  Undeviating  adherence  to  truth  and 
justice  may  possibly  lose  to-day's  customer,  but  in  the 
long  run  it  will  bring  as  many  more  as  it  is  more  im- 
plicitly trusted.  There  is,  I  know,  a  certain,  low- 
minded  folk  who  have  a  general  liking  to  high  talk, 
and  can  hardly  imagine  they  have  made  a  good  bar- 
gain, till  they  have  gotten  the  price  down  a  great  way 
below  the  talk.  And  yet  most  men  are  wiser,  loving 
to  buy  of  one  who  puts  them  at  their  ease,  by  his 
quiet  ways  of  integrity.  They  make  a  study  instinct- 
ively of  the  salesman,  and  if  they  find  him  pressing 
his  point  by  much  talk,  and  that  which  is  manifestly 
reckless,  they  are  taken  both  by  a  disgust  and  a  cau- 
tion, and  leave  him  to  the  knavish  airs  of  his  practice. 

Of  course  it  will  be  understood  that  no  one,  caring 
to  be  a  christian  in  trade,  wTants  to  be  certified  of  any 
such  possibility  in  sales  and  distributions  that  are 
themselves  illicit,  or  immoral.  Moreover  trade  itself 
is  a  grand  republic  of  commerce,  under  laws  of  use 
and  beneficence.  These  illicit  engagements  are 
outside  of  morality,  doing  no  service,  satisfying  no 
beneficent  use — outrages  often  of  liberty,  insults  to 
purity,  instigations  of  appetite — and  of  course  are 
just  as  far  outside  of  trade.  They  are  even  mockeries 
of  it  in  its  prime  idea ;  selling  what  they  call  goods, 
which  they  know  to  be  evils. 

There  are  then,  as  we  have  now  discovered,  no  rea- 
sons why  a  young  man  going  into  trade,  may  not  ex- 
pect to  be  a  christian  in  it.  The  contrary  impression 
so  often  held    is  without    any  sufficient   foundation. 


IN   TRADE.  255 

But  the  possibility  does  not  make  sure  of  the  fact,  and 
we  now  pass  on — 

II.  To  show  how  the  trading  man  may  be  surely 
christian,  and  more  decidedly  and  strongly  christian 
for  his  engagement. 

At  this  point  we  ascend  of  course  to  a  higher  point, 
above  the  plane  of  morality,  and  begin  to  look  after 
what  belongs  to  the  life  of  religion.  No  man  of 
course  expects  to  be  a  christian  in  trade,  without 
being  a  religious  man  in  it.  And  just  here,  alas  !  is 
the  difficulty  most  commonly  encountered — the  diffi- 
culty, viz.,  of  continuing  to  be  a  christian  without  be- 
ginning to  be  ;  the  difficulty  of  being  kept  safe  in  re- 
ligion, or  religious  character,  by  a  business  carried  on 
without  such  character,  and  wholly  outside  of  re- 
ligion. I  even  suppose  it  will  be  objected  mentally, 
at  least,  by  some,  that  after  all  I  only  undertake  to 
show  how  a  man  may  be  a  christian  in  trade  by  being 
one.  Undoubtedly  I  do  ;  for  it  would  be  a  very  sin- 
gular thing  if  I  could  show  how  one  may  be  a  chris- 
tian in  trade,  without  having  it  on  hand  to  be,  or  with- 
out any  responsibility  accepted  for  being  a  christian 
at  all.  No,  the  point  I  undertake  to  show  is  how  a 
man,  who  is  in  the  beginning  of  a  christian  life,  or 
seriously  bent  on  such  a  beginning,  can  maintain  the 
love  of  God,  and  grow  up  into  God,  by  faith  and 
prayer,  and  go  on  to  make  all  most  solid  attainments 
of  character,  in  the  life-occupation  of  trade.  And 
then  when  the  question  how  is  raised,  the  very  first, 
always  indispensable,  thing  is  that  he  shall  be  faith- 


256  HOW   TO   BE    A    CHRISTIAN 

fully  set  to  it,  and  expect  to  succeed  only  by  making 
cost  for  it— by  enduring  hardness,  by  fighting  out  the 
great  human  battle  with  self-seeking  and  the  love  of 
money,  and  by  standing  fast  in  God's  name  in  all 
holiest  integrity.  He  must  not  go  into  trade  as  any 
sharp  work,  to  be  sharply,  shrewdly  done,  he  must  not 
pitch  himself  recklessly  into  making  his  fortune,  he 
must  not  look  upon  his  business  future  with  a  mind 
wholly  slack  towards  God  and  religion,  willing  to  be 
floated  whither  the  tide  will  carry  him.  No  true 
character  is  ever  made  in  that  way,  in  any  employ- 
ment. A  going  in  upon  chance,  with  a  slack  mind 
submitted  to  the  drift  of  the  occupation,  is  enough  to 
make  sure  as  possible  of  not  being  a  christian  any 
where.  And  it  is  precisely  in  that  way  that  trade  has 
come  to  be  regarded  as  a  kind  of  life  so  preemi- 
nently hostile  to  the  interests  of  character. 

It  is  also  another  very  important  consideration  that 
you  are  permitted,  if  at  all,  to  go  into  this  occupation 
by  a  really  divine  call.  Not  many,  I  suspect,  ever 
think  of  any  such  possibility  for  a  merely  secular  em- 
ployment, or  for  any  but  that  perhaps  of  the  christian 
ministry.  And  very  few,  I  fear,  thoroughly  believe 
in  even  that ;  simply  because  it  is  held  to  be  a  thing 
so  entirely  special,  a  call  of  God  that  stands  by  itself, 
with  no  other  to  match  it,  or  keep  it  company. 
Whereas  the  real  and  really  grand  truth  is  that  God 
has  a  place  for  every  man,  in  what  is  to  be  his  par- 
ticular employment,  as  he  has  a  place  for  every  rock, 
and  tree,  and  river,  and  star.     And  exactly  this  *am 


IN    TRADE.  257 

assume,  perhaps  without  knowing  it,  when  we  speak  of 
this  or  that  man's  employment  as  being  this  or  that 
man's  calling.  We  use  the  word  as  in  a  smothered  mean- 
ing, to  signify  only  his  engagement  or  life-occupation  ; 
but  there  lingers  in  it,  we  may  see,  a  certain  divine  re- 
collection, as  if  he  were  in  it,  or  it  were  his  privilege  to 
be,  as  by  God's  personal  and  particular  call.  He  may 
not  so  believe,  himself,  but  just  as  surely  as  he  is  in 
his  own  right  place,  he  is  in  that  to  which  he  is  called, 
whether  he  has  ever  thought  of  it  in  that  way  or  not. 
Some  are  not  in  their  place,  and  it  is  their  sad  in- 
felicity that  they  never  can  be.  But  the  great  major- 
ity of  men  I  do  think  are  led,  drawn,  beckoned,  whis- 
pered into  their  calling,  some  pushed  in  by  stern  ne- 
cessities, some  by  urgent  wants  or  incapacities,  some 
crowded  in  by  Providential  circumventions.  Mean- 
time a  blessed  few  find  their  places  by  going  to  God 
for  them.  And  this  most  sublime  and  really  glorious 
privilege  is  for  all,  and  for  all  kinds  of  places  and  em- 
ployments. There  is  such  a  thing  as  spiritual  guid- 
ance for  men.  You  can  form  some  judgment  of  your 
calling  by  finding  what  others  think  of  you ;  by 
considering  also  your  tastes,  and  tempers,  and  capa- 
bilities ;  what  kind  of  loads  you  can  carry ;  what  kind 
of  annoyances  you  can  bear ;  also  by  considering  what 
opportunities  of  good  are  afforded ;  and  where  you 
can  make  yourself  of  greatest  consequence  to  man- 
kind, and  the  salvation  given  to  mankind ;  but  then, 
when  all  such  inquiries  are  ended,  you  can  be  ab- 
solutely sure  of  your  calling,  by  seeking  unto  God"s 
22* 


258  HOW   TO   BE   A   CHRISTIAN 

oracle  for  it.  Tided  inwardly  by  his  divine  Spirit, 
as  yon  may  be,  you  will  flow  in  sweetly,  as  by  si- 
lent drift,  into  the  very  thing  which  is  to  be  your 
calling ;  whether  it  be  trade,  manufacture,  or  any 
other  calling.  And  then  having  found  your  occupa- 
tion, and  come  into  it  by  the  calling  of  God,  what  sat- 
isfaction will  you  have  in  it !  how  reverently,  lovingly, 
safely,  will  you  invest  your  life  in  it ! 

Now,  again,  after  being  thus  installed  in  trade,  as 
by  the  call  of  God,  how  surely  may  you  have  God's 
help  in  the  prosecution  of  it.  How  surely,  that  is,  if 
you  ask  it,  and  train  your  ways  of  practice  so  that  you 
can  fitly  receive  it.  Here,  too,  I  shall  encounter,  as  I 
well  understand,  a  certain  kind  of  unbelief  that  makes 
it  extravagant,  or  even  a  merely  pietistic  illusion,  to 
be  looking  for  God's  help  in  such  a  matter  as  the  car- 
rying on  of  a  trade !  As  if  the  Spirit  of  God,  by  his 
private  concourse,  or  the  Providence  of  God,  by  his 
government  of  the  world,  could  descend  to  the  care  of 
the  very  small,  very  secular  matter  of  helping  a  man 
succeed  in  a  concern  of  traffic !  Of  course  he  can  not 
and  will  not,  if  traffic  is  the  really  selfish  and  low  con- 
cern we  are  all  the  while  assuming  it  to  be.  But  if  it 
be  a  proper  and  most  real  industry,  if  it  undertakes  to 
gain  a  profit  by  doing  a  service,  and  a  profit  propor- 
tioned to  the  service,  if  it  is  and  is  to  be  a  beneficent 
matter,  such  as  any  call  of  God  must  be;  then  I  see 
not  why  even  God  should  scorn  it,  or  refuse  to  be  a 
helper  in  it.  He  did  not  scorn  to  give  a  special  in- 
spiration to  Bezaleel  the  artificer  in  brass,  and  Alio- 


IN   TRADE.  259 

liab  the  carpenter,  filling  them  "  with  the  Spirit  of 
God,  in  wisdom  and  in  understanding,"  to  "  devise 
cunning  works,"  "  in  all  manner  of  workmanship." 
God  indorsed  the  patriotic  prayers  of  Xehemiah  and 
sent  him  back  with  money  and  much  timber  to  rebuild 
the  city.  Paul  commanded  in  the  shipwreck,  by  the 
Spirit,  even  down  to  the  matter  of  dining  before  the 
break.  If  we  think  that  all  things  secular  are  too 
common  for  God's  care,  we  dishonor  both  ourselves 
and  him.  God  helps  nothing  wrong,  and  omits  to 
help  nothing  right.  All  right  employments  are  call- 
ings into  which  he  puts  his  servants  for  their  good,  and 
what  will  he  more  surely  do  than  help  them  to  find 
their  good  !  The  trader  is  not  a  man  by  himself,  and 
yet  in  some  sense  he  is ;  for  his  purchases  are  often 
a  very  blind  problem,  his  rivals  are  many  and  some- 
times bitterly  unjust,  his  risks  depend  on  things  ex- 
ceedingly occult,  his  liabilities  of  panic  when  great 
storms  of  revulsion  overturn  the  confidences  of  credit, 
are  such  as  not  even  military  commanders  often  en- 
counter in  disastrous  campaigns.  Customers  too  are 
how  often  unreasonable,  creditors  unjust  and  rapa- 
cious, the  laws  a  trap,  and  the  courts  more  careful  to 
be  ingenious  than  to  be  just.  In  all  which,  as  by 
these  mere  glances  we  discover,  the  merchant,  going 
into  trade,  most  truly  goes  to  sea.  His  calling  is 
verily  on  the  deep — unstable,  stormy,  set  about  by  com- 
binations and  complexities  that  require  high  courage, 
a  firm,  steady-judging  mind,  a  perception  that  is  next 
thing  to  a  prophecy  of  event.     Therefore  he  wants,  if 


260  HOW    TO   BE    A   CHRISTIAN 

any  man  does,  true  God-help  always  at  hand,  and 
much  of  it.  He  needs,  for  his  mere  business'  sake  and 
the  solid  composure  of  his  counsel,  a  steadfast  ground- 
ing in  God,  and  a  conscious  strengthening  with  might 
by  God's  Spirit  in  the  inner  man.  Scarcely  does  even 
an  apostle  need  it  more. 

It  is  another  consideration  also  that  reaches  far,  that 
the  merchant  in  his  calling  of  trade  is  put  in  a  relation 
to  God  so  inherently  religious,  if  he  will  undertake  it 
in  that  manner,  that  he  is  justified  in  passing  his  vow 
not  to  be  in  trade,  or  even  for  a  day  to  stay  in  it,  if  he 
can  not  have  the  enjoyment  of  God  in  it.  This 
is  true  of  all  legitimate  occupations,  and  all  right 
works  of  industry,  and  not  less  true  of  trade  than  of 
any  other,  that  the  man  who  is  in  it  can  have  and  is 
bound  to  have  God  with  him  in  it ;  to  begin  his  day 
with  God's  smile,  to  end  it  in  God's  approbation,  and 
to  pass  it  all  through  in  the  testimony  that  he  pleases 
God.  Going  thus  into  and  onward  in  trade,  he  will 
have  no  difficulty  in  being  a  christian  in  it.  He  is 
fast  anchored  in  all  right  practice  and  right  living,  by 
holding  himself  to  courses  that  permit  the  enjoyment 
of  God,  and  then  the  enjoyment  of  God  will  in  turn 
hold  him  to  his  courses.  Doubtless  a  man  may  be  a 
very  poor  christian,  who  settles  by  mere  hap-hazard  into 
such  kind  of  courses  as  will  fill  up  his  money-making 
days ;  a  great  many  poor  christians  are  made  in  that 
way,  and  a  great  many  more  that  are  no  christians  at 
all.  And  so  it  is  in  every  lawful  business  the  world 
knows.     No  carpenter,  blacksmith,  weaver,    clothier, 


IN   TRADE.  261 

no  simplest  and  purest  of  all  tradesmen,  gets  on  well 
as  a  christian,  who  does  not  set  himself  to  such  a  kind 
of  living  that  he  can  have  the  enjoyment  of  God  in  it. 
But  having  that,  how  smoothly  does  he  sail  out  on  his 
course,  and  how  sweetly  do  the  gales  of  the  Spirit 
waft  him  on.  Such  a  man  can  be  a  christian  any 
wdiere,  and  will  as  certainly  be,  in  trade  as  any  where 
else. 

Again  there  are  even  special  advantages  in  trade  as 
regards  the  development  of  a  christian  life,  which  do 
not  occur  as  largely  in  any  other  employment.  The 
transactions  are  many,  crowding  thick  upon  the 
shelves  and  counters  all  the  day.  The  temptations  of 
course  are  just  as  much  more  numerous  as  the  transac- 
tions ;  and  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  more 
tempted  a  man  is,  the  more  opportunities  are  given 
him  to  grow.  Scarcely  could  he  grow  at  all  if  none 
at  all  were  put  in  his  way.  Besides,  the  thicker 
temptations  are  huddled,  the  less  chance  they  have  to 
prevail ;  there  is  no  time  in  fact  to  do  much  more 
than  to  reject  them.  AVhereas  if  temptations  only 
come  single,  one  a  day  for  example,  hanging  round  the 
mind  in  still  approaches  of  seduction,  and  holding  as 
it  were  all  day  their  magnifiers  up  before  it,  the  poor 
disciple's  chances  of  resistance  are  how  greatly  dimin- 
ished. 

There  is  also  a  considerable  christian  advantage  in 
the  relation  that  subsists  between  the  merchant  and 
his  customer.  To  be  a  customer  signifies  more 
or   less   of  favor   and  confidence.      The  customer,  in 


262  HOW    TO   BE    A    CHRISTIAN 

being  such,  commits  himself  in  a  large  degree  to  the 
honor  of  the  merchant,  and  then  the  merchant  in  turn 
accepts  him  naturally:  as  a  man  who  comes  in  expres- 
sion of  trust,  and  is  fairly  entitled  to  generosity.  And 
if  the  customer  is  an  old  customer,  coming  to  his  old 
haunt  of  trade,  where  the  old  fair-dealing  trader  has 
for  so  many  years  been  proving  his  integrity,  you  will 
see  that  they  meet  as  friends,  and  not  as  sharpers  com- 
ing to  the  prey.  And  if  they  are  christian  men,  you 
will  see  that  also,  even  though  they  do  not  say  a  word 
about  religion.  There  is  no  barrier  visibly  between 
them,  but  a  perfectly  open  confidence,  and  their 
meeting  does  them  good,  as  truly  as  if  there 
were  some  grace  of  communion  in  it — as,  in  fact, 
there  is. 

Sometimes  again'the  proposed  transaction  of  trade 
includes  a  question  of  credit.  And  here  the  merchant 
is  put  to  a  trial  that  always  yields  him  benefit.  He  is 
getting  insight  thus  into  men,  and  learning  whom  he 
may  safely  trust.  His  whole  exercise  goes  to  sharpen 
his  perceptions  of  character.  He  learns  in  it  also  to 
respect  modesty  and  neatness  of  person,  with  plain- 
ness of  dress.  And  above  all  he  learns  to  observe 
who  a  man's  friends  are,  as  the  most  significant  token 
of  all.  He  gets  a  way  of  moral  sharpness  in  this  way 
that  has  an  immense  value  in  his  understanding  even 
of  himself.  Specie  payments  and  pay-down  trade 
would  make  a  very  stupid  and  morally  stupefying  ele- 
ment in  comparison. 

Trade  also  furnishes  occasions  of  beneficence  to  the 


IN    TRADE.  263 

poor,  which  are  all  the  better  for  both  parties,  that 
they  make  no  parade  of  charity,  but  may  pass  for  a 
buying  and  selling  between  them.  The  merchant,  I 
have  said,  should  do  his  trade  by  the  strict  law  prin- 
ciples of  trade,  and  never  let  his  operations  be  mixed 
up  with  charities.  But  how  many  beautiful  charities 
may  he  dispense  under  the  nature  of  trade,  which  not 
even  the  receiver  will  know,  and  which  he  himself 
will  enjoy  the  more,  that  he  has  them  for  his  unknown 
secret  before  God.  Thus  he  parcels  off  what  he  may 
consider  to  be  more  or  less  nearly  the  waste  of  trade, 
all  which  he  would  otherwise  put  in  auction,  and  sell 
at  great  loss  to  himself  and  great  profit  to  the  buyer, 
and  marking  it  down  to  the  very  lowest  rate  he  could 
hope  to  receive — remnants,  faded,  and  smirched,  and 
smoked,  and  shelf-worn  goods,  and  styles  of  goods 
gone  by — gives  his  silent  order  to  sell  in  that  mark, 
to  chosen  candidates  hard-pressed  by  want,  and  ready 
because  of  their  want,  to  find  a  relief  most  welcome 
in  the  opportunity.  It  is  trade  on  one  side,  and 
trade  on  the  other  ;  only  that  on  one  side  it  is  so  near 
to  the  confines  of  beneficence  that  it  consciously  passes 
over.  A  more  gentle,  genial,  and  genuine  influence 
on  the  man  could  hardly  be  devised. 

It  is  yet  another  and  very  great  moral  advantage  of 
trade,  that  it  is  just  the  calling  in  which  a  christian 
man  will  best  learn  the  uses  of  money.  If  he  began 
as  a  christian  at  the  true  principle  of  christian  living, 
he  put  himself  in  bonds,  so  to  speak,  to  consecrate  all 
his  successes  to  God.     And  then,  from  that  point  on- 


264  HOW   TO   BE    A   CHRISTIAN 

ward,  he  has  not  been  after  money  for  money's  sake, 
but  as  capital  for  other  kinds  of  works  ;  sometimes 
secular  and  sometimes  religious.  He  handles  what 
he  gains  by  trade  in  turns  of  nimble  investment,  and 
never  hoards  it.  The  agriculturist  and  the  small  ar- 
tisan handle  money  slowly  in  restricted  quantities. 
It  stays  long  in  their  hands  before  expenditure  ;  they 
look  at  it  often,  and  begin  to  think  fondly  of  it.  In 
this  way  they  very  often  become  misers.  But  the 
merchant  almost  never  is  a  miser ;  for  the  money  that 
he  gains  signifies  nothing  to  him,  save  in  the  footing 
of  his  balances.  It  freely  comes  and  freely  goes,  and 
he  turns  it  as  readily  into  goods  as  goods  into  money. 
Money  in  fact  is  to  him  but  one  of  the  kinds  of  goods  ; 
more  valuable  if  at  all  than  any  other,  because  it  is 
more  easily  convertible.  And  for  just  this  reason  it 
is  that  our  freest  and  largest  benefactors  in  the  mat- 
ters of  public  charity  and  religion,  are  commonly  men 
who  have  gotten  their  success  by  trade — because  their 
notions  are  not  stunted  by  the  small  amount  of  money 
needed  in  carrying  on  their  transactions,  and  be- 
cause what  they  get  is  expected  to  go  and  not  to 
stay. 

Hence,  I  conceive,  it  is  going  to  be  discovered,  that 
the  great  problem  we  have  now  on  hand,  viz.,  the 
christianizing  of  the  money  power  of  the  world,  de- 
pends for  its  principal  hope,  on  the  trading  class  in  so- 
ciety. Talent  has  been  christianized  already  on  a 
large  scale.  The  political  power  of  states  and  kingdoms 
has  been  long  assumed  to  be,  and  now  at  least  really 


IN   TRADE.  265 

is,  as  far  as  it  becomes  their  accepted  office    to  main- 
tain  personal    security    and    liberty.      Architecture, 
arts,  constitutions,  schools,   and  learning,  have  been 
largely  christianized.     But  the  money  power,  which 
is  one  of  the  most  operative  and   grandest  of  all,  is 
only  beginning  to  be ;  though  with  promising  tokens 
of  a  tin  ally  complete  reduction  to  Christ  and  the  uses 
of  his  kingdom.      In  our  late  civil  war,  the  money 
power,  for  the  first  time,  so  far  as  I  know,  since  the 
world  began,  laid  itself  fairly  on  the  altar,  and  gave 
itself,  in  heartily-pledged  devotion,  to  the  public  wel- 
fare.    It   even    took   up,    we   may   say,   the  nation's 
heavy  and  huge  bulk,  and  bore  it  grandly  through  on 
its  Atlantean   shoulders.      Every  thing  we  have  for 
public  love,  was  the  maxim  even  of  money,  and  there 
was  never  before  a  fiscal  campaign  to  match  the  sub- 
limity and  true  majesty  of  the  spectacle.     It  was  the 
money  power  standing  sponsor  for  the  nation,  in  its 
terrible  baptism  of  blood.     Now    what  we  wait  for, 
and  are  looking  hopefully  to  see,  is  a  like  consecration 
of  the  vast  money  power  of  the  world,   to  the  work, 
and  cause,  and  kingdom,  of  Jesus  Christ.     For  that 
day,  when  it  comes,  is  the  morning,  so  to  speak,  of  the 
new  creation.     That  tide -wave  in  the  money  power 
can  as  little  be  resisted,  when   God   brings  it  on,  as 
the  tides  of  the  sea ;  and  like  these  also  it  will  flow 
across  the  world  in  a  day.     And  such  a  result,  I  con- 
ceive, we   are    to  look  for  largely,   to  the  merchant 
class  of  disciples.     Trade  expanding  into  commerce, 
and  commerce  rising  into  communion,  are  to  be  the 
23 


266  HOW   TO   BE   A    CHRISTIAN 

outline  of  the  story.  When  the  merchant  seeking 
goodly  pearls — all  the  merchant  race,  find  the  pre- 
cious one  they  seek,  and  sell  their  all  to  buy  it, 
they  will  make  it  theirs. 

The  question  I  began  with — "  How  to  be  a  chris- 
tian in  trade  V  is,  I  think,  now  sufficiently  an- 
swered. At  the  end  of  this  review,  I  think  it  will 
be  agreed,  that  there  is  no  calling  in  which  a  chris- 
tian may  grow  faster,  and  rise  higher  in  all  holy 
attainments.  After  he  has  once  learned  how  to 
enjoy  God  in  his  calling,  how  to  carry  Christ  di- 
rectly into  his  works,  and  do  all  in  the  higher  con- 
sciousness of  Christ  revealed,  his  satisfactions  will 
be  great,  his  increase  rapid,  his  strength  immov- 
able, and  his  very  sleep  elysian.  And  what  is  a 
nobler  sight  to  look  upon,  than  a  christian  mer- 
chant, standing  at  the  head  of  his  operations ;  thriv- 
ing in  the  small,  or  rolling  up  his  immense  income 
in  the  large ;  doing  every  thing  squarely,  as  in  terms 
of  business,  and  not  in  a  fast  and  loose  manner,  yet 
with  a  christian  heart  as  flexible  and  free,  and  as 
little  hampered  by  the  mechanism  of  trade,  as  love 
itself  must  ever  be  ;  then  passing  out  among  his 
kind,  to  look  about  for  objects  wanting  his  aid ; 
standing  as  a  bank  of  charity  for  all  good  neces- 
sities to  draw  upon  ;  resorted  to  with  confidence  by 
all  who  are  forward  in  good  works  ;  spreading  his 
generosity  well  up  toward  the  limit  of  his  surplus 
means ;   firm    in    credit  ;    honored   for    his   word    of 


IN    TRADE.  267 

promise ;  sought  unto  in  trust  by  the  righteous,  and 
remembered  in  the  prayers  of  the  poor — is  there  on 
this  earth  a  character  more  to  be  envied,  or  more 
genuinely  Christ-like  than  he  ? 


XIV. 

IN  AND  BY  THINGS  TEMPORAL  ARE  GIVEN 
THINGS  ETERNAL. 


"  While  we  look,  not  at  the  things  which  are  seen,  but  at  the 
things  which  are  not  seen ;  for  the  things  which  are  seen  are  tem- 
poral, but  the  things  which  are  not  seen  are  eternal." — 2  Cor.  4:   18. 

There  is  a  great  deal  said  about  looking  away  from 
the  things  of  time,  to  the  things  of  eternity ;  and 
Paul,  I  suppose,  is  credited  with  this  idea  on  the  score 
of  the  language  here  cited.  Whether  he  would  ac- 
cept the  credit  is  more  doubtful.  It  certainly  is  no 
conception  of  his,  that  we  are  to  ignore  the  temporal, 
and  go  clear  of  it,  in  order  to  being  fixed  in  the  eter- 
nal. Indeed  this  kind  of  prescription,  so  constantly 
reiterated,  and  soaked  in,  as  it  were,  by  a  long  dull- 
minded  usage,  is  really  about  the  sleepiest  and  most 
noxious  drug  that  Christian  living  has  ever  had  put  in 
its  way.  I  acknowledge  that  these  temporals  are 
often  too  much  like  the  temporalities  of  the  Pope, 
and  keep  the  eternals  a  great  way  oif.  But  if  we  lay  it 
down,  that  we  are  to  really  look  away  from  time, 
;  when  we  look  at,  or  in  order  to  look  at,  eternity,  we 
make  a  very  hard  case  for  practice;  for  what  figure  is 
any  one  likely  to  make  in  the  realizing  of  things  eter- 
nal, when  he  has  even  to  push  the  world  out  of  sight, 
(268) 


IN   AND   BY   THINGS   TEMPORAL,    ETC.      269 

in  order  to  see  them.  Have  we  not  also  a  suppressed 
or  subtly  instinctive  sense  of  something  unpractical  in 
the  attempt ;  as  if  it  were  a  forced  view  of  life,  more 
ascetical  than  practical.  How  can  we  think,  in  real 
earnest,  that  such  a  world  as  this  was  made  just  to  be 
looked  away  from  ?  And  if  we  try  to  do  it,  tearing 
our  mind  away  from  the  visible  and  the  temporal,  and. 
requiring  it  to  see  only  what  is  invisible  and  eternal, 
how  certainly  do  we  find  the  air  too  thin  to  support 
our  flighty  endeavor,  and  drop  away  shortly  on  the 
ground,  held  down  to  it,  after  all,  by  temporal  weights 
and  visibilities  we  can  not  escape. 

'And  just  here  I  apprehend  is  the  reason  in  great  part 
of  that  inability  to  realize,  or  give  a  sound  existence 
to  spiritual  things  of  which  so  many  complain — they 
misconceive  the  problem.  It  is  not  to  literally  look 
away  from  temporal  things  in  order  to  see  the  eternal, 
but  it  is  to  see  the  temporal  in  the  eternal,  or  through 
it  and  by  means  of  it.  These  temporals  I  conceive7 
are  the  scabbards  of  the  eternal,  or  the  capsules  in 
which  it  grows,  or  the  matches  whose  fires  are  kept 
hid  in  their  bodies.  Paul  I  am  sure  had  no  other 
conception.  By  not  looking  at  the  temporal  things, 
he  means  simply  not  fastening  our  mind  to  them,  or 
upon  them,  as  the  end  of  our  pursuit ;  for  he  calls 
them  "  things  that  are  seen"  which  implies  that,  in 
another  and  more  simply  natural  sense,  they  are 
looked  at ;  for  how  can  they  be  things  seen  if  they 
are  not  \ 


23* 


270  IN   AND   BY    THINGS    TEMPORAL 

There  is  then,  I  am  going  now  to  show,  &  fixed  rela- 
'  tion  between-  the  temporal  and  the  eternal,  such  tJiat  we  shall 
best  realize  the  eternal  by  rightly  using  the  temporal.  We 
shall  best  conceive  the  true  point  here,  by  observing 
the  manner  of  the  apostle  himself;  for  it  was  one  of 
the  remarkable  things  about  him  as  a  Christian,  that 
he  was  so  completely  under  the  power,  so  sublimely 
invigorated  by  the  magnitudes  of  the  world  to  come ; 
longing  for  it,  testing  himself  in  it,  and  carrying  the 
sense  of  it  with  him,  into  the  hearts  of  all  who  heard 
his  preaching.  Things  temporal  he  saw  a  great  deal 
more  penetratingly  than  any  mere  worldly  mind 
could  ;  saw  far  enough  into  them,  to  discover  their  un- 
solidity,  and  their  transitory  and  ephemeral  conse- 
quence, and  to  apprehend  jnst  so  much  the  more  dis- 
tinctly, the  solid  and  eternal  verities  represented  by 
them.  Things  and  worlds  are  passing — shadows  all 
that  pass  away.  The  durable  and  strong,  the  real  conti- 
nent, the  solid  landing-place,  is  beyond.  But  the  pres- 
ent things  are  good  for  the  passage,  good  for  signs,  good 
as  shadows.  So  he  tramps  on  through  them,  cheer- 
ing his  confidence  by  them,  having  them  as  reminders, 
and  renewing,  day  by  day,  his  outward  man  by  what 
of  the  more  solid  and  glorious  future  is  so  impressively 
.represented  and  captivatingly  set  forth  in  them.  He 
does  not  refuse  to  see  with  his  eyes  what  God  puts 
before  his  eyes.  He  has  noted  the  successions,  and 
phases,  and  forms  of  things.  He  distinguishes  God's 
stamps  and  signatures  upon  them,  takes  the  whole  or- 
der and  architecture  of  the  creation  as  a  type  of  God's 


ARE   GIVEN   THINGS    ETERNAL.  271 

great  mind,  and  rejoices  that  the  invisible  things  of 
God,  even  his  eternal  power  and  Godhead — all  the 
truths  eternal — are,  from  his  creation,  clearly  seen. 
He  loves  society  also  ;  rejoices  in  its  new  prospects, 
now  that  the  eternal  kingdom  of  the  Lord  Jesus  is  set 
up  in  it.  And  what  is  more  than  all, — more  than  the 
creation,  more  than  society,  more  than  all  things  tem- 
poral and  visible,  Christ,  the  Son  of  God  himself,  has 
come  out  in  his  eternity,  to  be  incarnate  in  these 
scenes,  and  live  in  them  and  look  upon  them  with  his 
human  eyes.  And  so  these  all  are  hallowed  by  the 
enshrining,  for  a  time,  of  his  glorious  divinity  in  them, 
becoming  temporalities  redolent  of  his  eternity.  And 
so,  as  every  thing  was  raised  in  quality,  even  from  the 
grave  he  perfumed  by  lying  in  it,  up  to  the  stars  he 
looked  upon,  all,  all,  this  wondrous  furniture  is 
changed  and  blessed,  and  hallowed  by  the  life  he  lived 
here  in  the  flesh.  In  a  world  thus  glorified,  it  would 
not  have  been  wonderful  if  Paul  had  even  been  ready, 
looking  round  upon  these  ranges  of  things  we  call 
idols  and  hinderances  to  religion,  to  say,  "  let  us 
make  tabernacles  and  stay."  And  yet  he  did  it  not. 
If  Christ  had  been  here,  Christ  also  had  gone ;  to  go 
therefore  and  be  with  him  was  far  better.  Christ  had 
come  too,  not  for  society's  sake,  not  to  beautify  and 
heal  and  gild  society,  or  to  get  up  any  paradise  in 
these  temporalities,  but  only  to  bring  us  on,  or  rather 
oft',  and  establish  us  in  the  grand  eternals  of  his  king- 
dom on  high.  Our  apostle  looked  thus  on  the  things 
that  are  temporal  as  not  looking  on  them,  but  as  look- 


272  IN   AND   BY   THINGS   TEMPORAL 

ing  straight  through,  on  the  things  eternal,  which  they 
represent  and  prepare.  He  looked  on  them  just  as 
one  looks  on  a  window-pane,  when  he  studies  the 
landscape  without.  In  one  view  he  looks  on  the  glass. 
In  another  he  does  not.  Probably  enough  he  does  not 
so  much  as  think  of  the  medium  interposed  at  all. 
Or,  a  better  comparison  still  is  the  telescope  ;  for  the 
lenses  of  glass  here  interposed,  actually  enable  the 
spectator  to  see,  and  yet  he  does  not  so  much  as  con- 
sider that  he  is  looking  on  the  lenses,  or  using  them  at 
all — he  only  looks  on  the  stars.  So  also  the  apostle 
looks  not  on  the  things  that  are  temporal,  even  while 
admiring  the  display  in  them  of  God's  invisible  and 
eternal  realities.  He  looks  on  them  only  as  seeing 
through ;  uses  them  only  as  a  medium  of  training, 
exercise,  access  unto  God.  Their  value  to  him  is  not 
in  what  they  are,  but  in  what  they  signify. 

Thus  it  is  a  true  use,  I  conceive,  of  things  tem- 
poral, that  they  are  to  put  us  under  the  constant  all- 
dominating  impression  of  things  eternal.  And  we 
are  to  live  in  them,  as  in  a  transparency,  looking 
through,  every  moment,  and  in  all  life's  works  and 
ways,  acting  through,  into  the  grand  reality-world  of 
the  life  to  come. 

Having  gotten  our  conception  thus  of  the  apostle's 
meaning,  as  well  as  a  good  argument  from  his  re* 
ligious  habit  and  character  to  prove  it,  let  us  next, 
consider  the  fact,  that  all  temporal  things  and  works 
are  actually  designed  or  planned  for  this  very  object ; 
viz.,  to  conduct  us  on,  or  through,  into  the  discovery 


ARE   GIVEN   THINGS   ETERNAL.  273 

of  things  eternal.  Every  existing  thing  or  object  in 
the  created  empire  of  God,  all  forms,  colors,  heights, 
weights,  magnitudes,  forces,  come  out  of  God's  mind, 
covered  all  over  with  tokens,  saturated  all  through 
with  flavors  of  his  intelligence.  They  represent  God's 
thought,  the  invisible  things  of  God  ;  and  an  angel 
coming  out  into  the  world,  instead  of  seeing  nothing  in 
them  but  only  walls,  would  see  God  expressed  by  them, 
just  as  we  are  expressed  by  our  faces  and  bodies.  The 
invisible  things  of  God,  all  his  eternal  realities,  would  be 
clearly  seen.  No,  we  do  not  become  worldly  by  look- 
ing at  things  temporal,  but  by  not  looking  at  them 
closely  enough,  and  with  due  religious  attention.  We 
first  make  idols  of  them  for  their  economic  uses  and 
their  market  value,  and  then,  having  begun  our  wor- 
ship, we  go  on  with  it,  having  our  eyes  shut.  Why 
should  we  look  in,  to  see  divine  things  in  them,  when 
we  are  already  so  far  captivated  by  what  they  are 
worth  in  possession  ?  How  different,  for  example, 
would  they  be,  if  we  could  but  stay  upon  them  long 
enough,  and  devoutly  enough,  to  see  the  prodigious 
workings  hid  in  them.  We  should  find  them  swing- 
ing and  careering  in  geometric  figures,  weighed  and 
spaced  in  geometric  proportions ;  and  what  are  these 
but  thoughts  of  mind  and  laws  of  thought — eternal  in 
their  very  nature  ?  It  comes  out  thus  to  us,  in  these 
stellar  magnitudes  and  motions,  that  they  must  be 
somehow  rolling  and  wheeling  inside  of  some  mind, 
as  if  they  were  its  proper  thinking — which  indeed 
they  are.     Again  what  do  we  find  as  regards  material 


274  IN   AND   BY   THINGS  TEMPORAL 

substances,  save  when  we  are  just  hoarding  them  for 
gain,  or  devouring  them  for  pleasure — uses  that  ad- 
journ intelligence — but  that  they  are  composed  of 
atoms  joined  by  count  in  the  exact  notations  and 
formulas  of  arithmetic  ?  So  that,  in  our  chemistries 
we  think  out  the  world — all  the  orb-matter  of  the 
sky,  all  the  earths  and  rocks  and  crystallizations. 
The  significance,  in  this  manner,  of  the  substances  is 
not  so  much  their  substance,  as  the  eternal  laws  we  be- 
hold in  them.  Mind,  we  see,  penetrates  them  all ; 
they  are  all  bedded  in  mind.  Necessary  truth,  the 
eternal  absolute  truth  of  mind,  that  which  being  must 
be  forever,  fills  and  orders  them  all,  visibles  and  tem- 
porals though  we  call  them. 

The  same  is  true  of  all  the  multifarious,  seemingly 
inexact  orders  of  animated  nature.  Bone,  flesh,  cir- 
culation, innerving  force,  what  do  they  make  but  a 
composition  that  appears  to  almost  think  aloud.  And 
so  evident  is  it,  that  these  classifications  of  life,  ani- 
mal and  vegetable,  are  related  to  mind,  that  Mr. 
Agassiz  puts  them  down  as  premeditations  of  God, 
eternal  orders  of  the  thoughts  of  God — which,  ruling 
creatively  in  them,  make  them,  in  that  manner,  not 
visibles  only,  but  intelligibles,  possible  objects  of 
science. 

There  is  yet  another  and  more  popular  way,  in 
which  these  temporal  and  visible  things  carry  forces 
and  weights  of  eternity  with  them — they  are  related 
as  signs  or  images,  to  all  the  most  effective  and  most 
glorious  truths   of  religion.      They  are  all   so  many 


ARE   GIVEN   THINGS   ETERNAL.  275 

physical  word-forms  given  to  make  up  images  and 
vocables  for  religion  ;  for  which  reason  the  Scripture 
is  full  of  them,  naming  and  describing  every  thing  by 
them — by  the  waters  and  springs  that  quench  our 
thirst,  by  the  bread  that  feeds  our  bodies,  by  the  grow- 
ing corn  in  its  stages,  by  the  tares  that  grow  with  it, 
by  the  lilies  in  their  clothing,  by  the  hidden  gold  and 
silver  and  iron  of  the  mountains,  by  the  sea,  the 
storms,  the  morning  mist,  the  clouds,  the  sun,  the 
starry  host,  the  deep  central  fires  of  the  ground,  and 
the  sulphurous  smoke  they  expel — every  thing  we 
look  upon  is  an  image  of  something  otherwise  not 
seen,  a  face  that  looks  out,  as  it  were,  from  God's 
eternity,  and  carries  God's  meanings  on  it.  Our  com- 
plaint therefore  that  temporal  things  hide  the  eternal 
and  keep  them  out  of  sight,  is  much  as  if  one  should 
complain  of  telescopes  hiding  the  stars,  or  window- 
panes  shutting  out  the  sun,  or  even  of  eyes  themselves 
obstructing  the  sense  of  things  visible.  There  is  a 
way,  I  know,  of  handling  these  temporals  coarsely  and 
blindly,  seeing  in  them  only  just  what  a  horse  or  a 
dog  might  see.  A  brutish  mind  sees  only  things 
in  things,  and  no  meanings.  If  it  were  possible  for 
us  to  ignore  every  thing  but  what  is  temporal,  we 
could  be  as  perfectly  unspiritual  as  the  animals  them- 
selves. And  a  great  many  minds  wholly  given  to 
things  are  doing  what  they  can  to  make  this  attain- 
ment. But  it  can  not  be  said,  without  the  greatest 
wrong  to  God,  that  he  has  given  us  these  temporalities 
to  live  in  for  any  such  use.     It  would  even  be  impos- 


276  IN    AND    BY   THINGS   TEMPORAL 

sible  to  make  up  a  world  of  so  many  temporal  things 
and  so  many  temporal  occasions,  and  keep  God's  light 
shining  on  their  faces  more  visibly,  or  keep  his  ever- 
lasting verities  more  effectively  present  to  every  sonl. 
Spirituality  of  habit  and  thought  could  not  be  made 
more  possible,  or  the  lack  of  it  more  nearly  impossible. 
Hence  also  the  fact  so  often  remarked,  that  forms, 
colors,  objects,  scenes,  have  all  a  power  so  captivating 
over  childish,  and  indeed  over  all  young  minds.  Thus 
we  note  the  irresistible  impulse  of  infants  to  handle 
every  thing,  which  means,  in  fact,  if  you  study  the 
matter  a  little,  that  every  thing   is  handling  them, 

Evoking  into  their  hearts,  filling  them  with  images 
id  shapes,  and  all  the  various  timber  of  thought, 
t  first  they  will  cry  after  the  moon,  or  the  fire ;  next 
they  will  run  after  the  rainbow  ;  and  then,  as  in  high 
youth,  will  see  all  things  dressed  in  such  colors  of  de- 
light, as  to  be  almost  bewildered  in  their  eagerness  to 
be  everywhere,  and  seize  all  things  at  once.  Now  we 
are  not  to  think  that  it  is  the  mere  quantities  or  sub- 
stances of  the  things,  but  their  senses  or  significances, 
that  take  such  hold  of  the  soul's  appetite.  They  cap- 
tivate, because  they  are  related  all  to  thought,  truth, 
feeling,  and  offer  a  drapery  to  the  inborn,  scarcely 
waked  affinities  of  the  mind  ;  because,  in  fact,  they  are 
the  faces  and  forms  of  God's  thought ;  existences 
analogous  to  whatever  is  highest  and  closest  to  di- 
vinity, in  our  human  mold ;  poems  for  the  eyes,  in 
which  the  subject  is  God. 

The   child  or  youth  thinks  not  of  it,  and  yet  the 


ARE   GIVEN   THINGS    ETERNAL.  277 

power  of  the  fact  is  on  him.  The  real  and  true  ac- 
count of  the  fact  is,  that  the  eternals  are  in  the  things 
looked  on  so  eagerly  by  these  young  eyes,  shining  out, 
filling  them  with  images,  starting  their  thoughts, 
kindling  fires  of  truth  and  eternity  in  their  spirit.  As 
age  advances,  the  eagerness  of  observation  slackens, 
but  the  old  man  who  has  lived  on  many  years,  won- 
dering all  the  while  where  God  is,  and  where  the 
eternal  things  are  hid,  has  all  the  images  in  him,  so 
that  when  the  Spirit  has  opened  his  understanding  to 
their  significance,  it  is  as  if  the  visible  things  of  God 
had  been  pouring  all  their  contents  into  his  bosom, 
and  he  did  not  know  it !  O  what  a  glory,  what  a 
power  of  eternity  is  in  them  now — strange  that  I 
should  have  chased  these  things  so  eagerly  in  my 
childhood,  not  knowing  why ;  stranger  still  that  I 
should  have  sought  and  followed  and  worshiped  them 
so  long  in  my  manhood,  and  valued  them  only  as 
things  ! 

Again,  it  is  the  continual  object  and  art  of  all  God's 
management,  temporal  and  spiritual,  secular  and 
christian,  to  bring  us  into  positions  where  we  may 
see,  or  may  rather  be  compelled  to  see,  the  eternal 
things  of  his  government.  So  little  reason  have  we 
to  complain,  as  we  do  continually,  that  our  relations, 
occupations,  and  works,  take  us  away  from  the  dis- 
covery of  such  things,  and  leave  us  no  time  or  ca- 
pacity for  it.  Thus,  at  our  very  first  breath,  we  are 
put  in  what  is  called  the  family  state.  In  the  provi- 
dence of  it  we  live.  By  the  discipline  of  it  we  learn 
24 


278  IN   AND   BY   THINGS   TEMPORAL 

what  love  is,  in  all  the  severe,  and  faithful,  and  tender 
offices  of  it.  And  so,  as  it  were  from  the  egg,"  we  are 
configured  to  the  eternal  family  state  for  which  we 
are  made. 

So,  also,  if  we  speak,  or  revelation  speaks,  of  an  un- 
seen government  or  kingdom;  where  we  get  the  very 
form  of  the  thought  from  our  outward  kingdoms 
below.  So  if  we  speak  of  law,  punishment,  pardon, 
or  judgment-seat  justification — these  all  are  notions 
prepared  in  us  by  the  civil  state,  and  by  that  means 
inserted  in  our  thought,  for  the  higher  uses  of  the 
eternal  government  in  our  souls. 

Meantime  the  ordinance  of  want  and  labor,  and  all 
the  industrious  works  and  cares  of  life — fearful  hin- 
derances,  we  say,  to  any  discovery  of  God — what  are 
they  still  but  works  and  struggles  leading  directly  in  to 
his  very  seat  ?  What  do  you  do  in  them,  in  fact,  but  just 
go  to  the  earth  and  the  great  powers  of  nature,  to  invoke 
them  by  your  industry,  and  by  your  labor  sue  out,  as  it 
were,  from  them,  the  supply  you  want  ?  And  when 
you  come  so  very  close  to  God,  even  to  the  powers 
and  laws  which  are  his  reigning,  everlasting  thoughts, 
what  temptation  have  you  to  lift  your  suit  just  one 
degree,  and  make  your  application  even  to  God  Him- 
self! It  is  the  beautiful  characteristic  of  industry 
that,  instead  of  taking  us  away  from  God,  and  things 
eternal,  it  takes  us  directly  towards  him,  and  puts  us 
"waiting  on  the  seasons,  the  soil,  the  mechanical  pow- 
ers, which  are  but  the  faithful  bosom  of  God  Himself ; 
and  there  we  hang,  year  by  year,  watching  for  our 


ARE   GIVEN   THINGS   ETERNAL.  279 

supplies  and  the  nutriment  that  feeds  our  bodies. 
Our  very  industry  is  a  kind  of  physical  prayer,  and 
the  business  itself  of  our  busy  life  is,  to  watch  the 
gates  of  blessing  he  opens  upon  us.  His  smile  feeds 
us,  and  his  goodness  ever  before  us  leads  us  to  re- 
pentance. 

His  scheme  of  Providence  also  is  adjusted  so  as  to 
open  windows  on  us  continually,  in  this  earthly  house 
of  our  tabernacle,  through  which  the  building  of  God, 
not  made  with  hands,  may  be  the  better  discovered. 
God  is  turning  our  experience  always,  in  a  way  to 
give  us  the  more  inward  senses  of  things,  acting  al- 
ways on  the  principle,  that  the  progress  of  knowl- 
edge, most  generically  and  comprehensively  regarded, 
is  but  a  progress  out  of  the  matter- view  into  the 
mind-view  of  things ;  for  all  the  laws,  properties, 
classifications  of  objects,  as  we  just  now  saw,  are 
thoughts  of  God  made  visible  in  them  ;  so  that  all  the 
growth  of  knowledge  is  a  kind  of  spiritualizing  of  the 
world ;  that  is,  a  finding  of  the  eternal  in  the  tem- 
poral. For  God  will  not  let  us  get  lodged  in  the  tem- 
poral, but  is  always  shoving  us  on  to  what  is  beyond. 
Whoever  undertakes  to  build  him  a  paradise  in  things 
and  stay  in  them,  is  either  defeated  and  driven  out  of 
his  project,  or  is  compelled  in  deep  sorrow  to  find,  that 
what  he  took  for  pure  delight  is  destitute  of  all  satis- 
faction ;  a  dry  cup,  or  even  a  condition  of  bitter  suf- 
fering. The  fires  that  fell  on  Sodom  are  scarcely  a 
more  visible  sign  that  Lot's  family  are  to  be  dis- 
lodged and  flee,  than  these  scorching  fires  of  Provi- 


280  IN   AND    BY   THINGS  TEMPORAL 

dence,  falling  on  our  temporal  state,  are  that  we  are 
not  to  stay  here,  and  shall  not  ?  And  so  God  is  com- 
manding us  off,  every  hour  of  our  lives,  toward  things 
eternal,  there  to  find  our  good,  and  build  our  rest. 
Sometimes  he  does  it  by  taking  us  out  of  the  world, 
and  sometimes  by  taking  the  world  out  of  us.  Or 
again  he  sometimes  does  it  by  breaking  in  a  way  for 
his  divine  light,  through  the  incrustations  we  have 
formed  about  us.  Thus,  living  in  the  temporals  and 
for  them,  we  call  them  nature,  and  nature  we  con- 
ceive to  be  a  wall  impervious  to  God  and  Spirit,  and 
all  supernal  visitations.  And  therefore  he  sends  down 
his  Son  from  above,  to  re-reveal  and  re-empower  the 
eternals  we  have  ceased  to  see.  And  it  is  as  if  he 
came  tearing  open  the  wall,  riddling  it  as  it  were  with 
interstices  all  through,  letting  in  the  love  of  God,  the 
mercy  and  salvation  provided,  and  calling  us  to  come 
up  through  into  the  eternal  life. 

Besides,  once  more,  we  have  eternals  garnered  up  in 
us  all,  in  our  very  intelligence ;  immortal  affinities, 
which,  if  we  forget  or  suppress,  are  still  in  us ;  great 
underlaid  convictions  also,  ready  to  burst  up  in  us 
and  utter  even  ringing  pronouncements ;  and  besides 
there  is  an  inevitable  and  sure  summons  always 
close  at  hand  as  we  know,  and  ready  for  its  hour ; 
whose  office  it  is  to  bring  the  great  eternals  near  and 
keep  them  in  power.  True  this  instituted  fact  of 
death  does  not  logically  prove  any  thing  as  regards 
the  existence  of  realities  unseen,  or  of  a  second 
life.     It   may  be   that   we   drop   into    nihility.     But 


ARE   GIVEN   THINGS    ETERNAL.  281 

we  are  very  little  likely  to  think  so,  if  only  we  can 
fully  admit,  what  we  so  perfectly  know,  that  these 
temporal  things  are  only  a  snow-bank,  dissolving 
under  us  to  let  us  through.  No  man  is  likely  to  miss 
the  eternal  when  once  he  has  let  go  the  temporal. 
Consent  that  you  are  dying,  and  that  time  is  falling 
away,  and  your  soul  will  arrive  at  the  conviction  of 
God's  eternity,  and  of  things  beyond  this  life,  very 
soon.  Nay,  she  will  hear  voices  of  eternity  crying  out 
in  her  own  deep  nature,  and  commanding  her  on  to  a 
future  more  solid  and  reliable  than  any  mere  tem- 
poralities can  afford. 

Here  then  we  are,  all  going  on,  or  in  rather,  to  be 
unsphered  here,  and  reinsphered,  if  we  are  ready  for 
it,  in  a  promised  life  more  stable  and  sufficient.  The 
eternal  has  been  with  ns  all  the  way,  even  when  we 
conld  not  find  it.  Now  it  is  fully  discovered,  and  be- 
come our  mansion  state.  The  fugacities  are  left  be- 
hind us.  The  poets,  too,  we  leave  chanting  their  sad 
refrain, 

"Naught  may  endure  but  mutability;" 

the  disappointed  and  world-weary,  sighing  over  the 
mere  shadows  which  they  say  were  all  that  was  given 
them  to  possess  or  pursue  ;  the  groping  ones  praying 
as  it  were  to  the  darkness,  "  O  that  I  knew  where  I 
might  find  him,"  and  complaining  if  there  be  a  God, 
and  things  eternal,  that  they  should  be  so  strangely 
hidden  by  the  curtains  of  sense,  so  dimly  seen,  so 
completely  shut  away  by  the  coarse  temporalities  of 
24* 


282  IN   AND   BY   THINGS  TEMPORAL 

things — all  these  we  leave  behind,  with  only  the 
greater  pity,  that  they  are  so  miserably  defrauded  and 
deplore  so  bitterly  the  not  seeing,  of  what  they  simply 
have  no  eyes  to  see.  We  did  see  something,  and  we 
now  see  more.  The  eternal  things  are  now  most  dis- 
tinctly seen,  and  the  temporal  scarcely  seen  at  all. 
So  that  as  we  now  look  back  on  the  old  physical  order, 
it  was  arranged,  we  see,  to  be  a  kind  of  transparency, 
and  we  were  set  in  among  and  behind  its  objects  and 
affairs,  before  open  windows  as  it  were,  there  to  look 
out  on  the  everlasting  and  set  our  life  for  it.  These 
temporal  things,  we  now  perceive,  were  sometimes 
dark  to  us,  just  because  we  insisted  on  using  them  as 
they  were  not  made  to  be  used,  even  as  a  telescope  is 
dark  to  them  who  will  only  look  into  the  side  of  it. 
How  could  they  be  otherwise  than  dark,  when  we 
never  sought  God  in  them,  but  only  the  things  them- 
selves. Or  if  we  sought  him  only  a  little,  with  a 
clouded  and  partly  idolatrous  love,  how  could  they  be 
much  less  dark  ?  God,  as  we  now  see,  meant  to  have 
the  eternities  stand  up  round  us,  even  as  they  do  here ; 
so  visible  and  tall  that  mere  temporalities  should 
dwindle  and  become  shadows  in  comparison.  To  the 
truly  great  and  godly  soul  they  always  were  so,  as 
they  now  are  to  us. 

Two  things  now,  having  reached  this  point,  let  me 
ask  you  to  note,  or  have  established.  First,  that  you  are 
never  to  allow  yourself  in  the  common  way  of  speak- 
ing, that  proposes  to  look  away  from  the  things  of 
time,  or  calls  on  others  to  do  it.     Never  speak  as  if 


ARE   GIVEN   THINGS   ETERNAL.  283 

that  were  the  way  of  an  unworldly  christian,  for  it  is 
not.  The  unworldly  christian,  if  he  has  the  true 
mettle  of  a  great  life  in  him,  never  looks  away  from 
the  things  of  time,  but  looks  only  the  more  piercingly 
into  them  and  through.  He  does  not  expect  to  find 
God  beyond  them,  but  in  them,  and  by  means  of  them. 
Besides,  this  call  to  look  away  from  the  things  of  time, 
good  enough  as  a  figure  sometimes,  has  yet  a  weak 
and  sickening  sound.  It  is  not  a  living  piety  that 
speaks  in  this  manner,  but  a  frothy  and  debilitated 
sentiment.  God  help  you  rather  to  be  manly  enough 
to  use  the  world  as  it  is,  and  get  your  vision  leveled 
for  eternal  things  in  it,  and  by  it.  You  will  come  up 
unto  God  by  uses  of  mastery,  and  not  by  retreat  and 
feeble  deprecation.  These  are  they  that  endure  and 
faint  not.  This  world  has  no  power  to  baffle  them,  or 
turn  them  away.  They  live  in  it  always,  having  a 
sound  respect  to  it,  because  they  see  God  in  it,  and 
love  to  watch  his  footsteps.  O  these  grand,  un- 
worldly souls,  how  majestic  their  aspirations,  how 
solid  their  objects,  how  firm  their  sense  of  God.  They 
live  in  the  present  as  a  kind  of  eternity,  never  sick  of 
it,  and  never  wanting  more,  but  only  what,  this  sig- 
nifies. 

Another  correspondent  caution,  secondly,  needs  to 
be  noted,  and  especially  by  those  who  are  not  in  the 
christian  way  of  life.  They  inevitably  hear  a  great 
deal  said  of  spiritual- mindedness,  and  they  see  not 
any  meaning  to  give  it,  which  does  not  repel  them. 
What  are  called  spiritual  things  appear  to  them  to  be 


284      IN  AND    BY   THINGS   TEMPORAL,    ETC. 

only  a  kind  of  illusion,  a  fog  of  mystic  meditation,  or 
mystic  expectation,  which  the  fonder,  less  perceptive 
believers  press  out  thin,  because  they  have  not  strength 
enough  to  body  their  life  in  things  more  solid  and 
rational.  Living  therefore  in  this  spiritually  minded 
way  appears  to  be  living  in  phantasm,  or  breathing 
only  hydrogen,  or  some  kind  of  fetid  air,  which  can 
not  sustain  a  properly  vigorous  life.  There  could  not 
be  an  impression  farther  from  the  truth.  For  the 
spiritually  minded  person  spiritualizes  temporal  things 
and  the  temporal  life,  by  nothing  but  by  just  seeing 
them  in  their  most  philosophic  sense.  He  takes  hold 
of  the  laws,  finds  his  way  into  the  inmost  thoughts, 
follows  after  the  spirit-force  everywhere  entempled, 
and  puts  the  creation  moving,  at  every  turn,  in  the 
supreme  order  of  Mind.  If  this  be  illusion,  God  give 
us  more  of  it.  The  spiritual  habit  is,  in  this  view, 
reason,  health,  and  everlasting  robustness. 


XV. 

GOD   ORGANIZING  IN  THE   CHURCH   HIS   ETER 
NAL  SOCIETY. 


"  But  ye  are  come  unto  Mount  Ziou,  and  unto  the  city  of  the  living 
God,  the  heavenly  Jerusalem,  and  to  an  innumerable  company  of 
angels,  to  the  general  assembly  and  church  of  the  first-born,  which 
are  written  in  heaven,  and  to  God  the  Judge  of  all,  and  to  the  spirits 
of  just  men  made  perfect." — Heb.  12  :  22,  3. 

When  we  read  this  passage  of  Scripture,  we  seem 
to  scarcely  know  what  world  it  is  in  or  about,  and  not 
much  better  what  world  we  are  in  ourselves.  "  But 
ye  are  come,"  says  the  apostle, — are  come,  in  the  pres- 
ent tense — that  is,  come  already.  And  yet  a  great 
part  of  the  terms  that  follow, — city  of  the  living 
God, — heavenly  Jerusalem, — innumerable  company  of 
angels, — general  assembly  and  church  of  the  first-born, 
whose  names  are  written  in  heaven, — appear  to  be 
upper-world  terms,  proper  only  to  the  kingdom  of 
God  above.  Which  blending,  again,  of  celestial  scene- 
ries, in  terms  of  the  present  tense,  with  sceneries  part- 
ly terrestrial,  is  permitted  the  apostle,  it  may  be,  on  the 
ground  of  a  large  analogy  and  comprehensive  unity, 
including  both  spheres  of  life  together.  All  the  more 
competent  and  commensurate  is  the  grasp  of  idea  in 
the  specification  given  ;  all  the  more  fit,  too,  we  shall 
(285) 


286         GOD   ORGANIZING   IN   THE   CHURCH 

see,  is  the  double  compass  of  the  language,  to  the  pur- 
pose  I  have  now  in  hand ;  viz.,  to  magnify  the  church 
of  God,  and  freshen  up,  if  possible,  some  due  con- 
ception of  its  universality  and  of  our  responsibility 
for  it. 

It  is  one  of  the  remarkable,  and,  it  seems  to  me, 
gloomy  signs  of  our  time,  that  we  are  so  evidently 
losing  interest  in  the  church  and  respect  for  it.  It  is 
not  a  thing  so  very  new,  that  a  great  many  persons 
outside  of  the  church  take  up  a  prejudice  against  it, 
and  begin  to  prophecy,  with  airs  of  exultation,  its 
shortly  going  by,  to  be  among  the  things  that  were ; 
but  it  is  a  matter  of  far  more  appalling  significance 
that  so  many  of  its  own  members  appear  to  be  some- 
how losing  out  even  their  confidence  in  it.  They  do 
not  really  care  much  for  it,  and  for  this  reason  prob- 
ably, appeals  of  duty  made  for  it  get  as  little  fixed  hold 
of  impression,  or  practical  conviction,  as  in  such  a  case 
they  must.  Even  if  they  pray  for  it,  and  occasionally 
speak  in  a  way  to  magnify  the  duties  we  owe  it,  there 
is  yet  a  certain  slackness  in  their  manner,  which  indi- 
cates rather  a  wish  to  have  some  concern  for  it,  than 
a  real  concern.  I  sometimes  hear  the  question  raised 
by  such,  what,  after  all,  is  the  use  of  the  church? 
Would  it  not  be  just  as  well  if  it  were  given  up,  or 
disbanded  ?     Is  it  not  in  fact  gone  by  already  ? 

No,  it  is  not,  I  am  sure, — and  never  can  be.  Do 
we  not  know  that  Christ  gave  himself  for  it,  that  he 
purchased  it  with  his  own  blood,  and  set  it  on  a  rock, 
and  declared  that  not  even  the  gates  of  hell  should 


HIS    ETERNAL   SOCIETY.  287 

prevail  against  it  ?  Is  it  then  going  down  just  now  ? 
Is  it  coming  to  be  an  outgrown  fact  %  Not  unless  Jesus 
Christ  is  outgrown  and  his  kingdom  antiquated,  which 
I  do  not  think  will  very  soon  appear.  Until  then,  be 
the  look  just  now  as  it  may, — until  then,  the  church 
will  stay,  and  we  may  as  well  be  sure  of  it.  Besides, 
I  think  wTe  shall  finally  discover,  after  we  have  fairly 
wTorn  out  our  extempore  and  shallow  strictures,  that 
there  is  interest  and  meaning  enough  in  it,  to  make  it 
the  grand,  everlasting  fact  of  the  creation  of  God — all 
which  I  now  proceed  to  show. 

The  church  is  bottomed,  for  its  final  end  or  cause, 
in  society.  Man,  as  we  are  all  the  while  saying  in  the 
tritest  manner  possible,  is  a  social  being  ;  only  we  con- 
ceive but  very  partially  and  dimly  wThat  we  are  to 
mean  by  it.  We  ought  to  mean,  as  regarding  both 
him  and  all  other  like  moral  natures  in  other  like 
worlds,  that  they  are  items  only  or  atoms — incomplete 
beings,  and  scarcely  more  than  candidates  for  being — 
till  they  become  organically  set  and  morally  joined  in 
society.  Existing  simply  as  units,  in  their  natural 
individualities,  they  are  not  of  much  consequence 
either  to  themselves  or  to  each  other.  In  that  kind  of 
merely  sole  existence  they  have  nothing  to  raise  the 
pitch  of  their  consciousness,  no  moral  dues  of  brother- 
hood or  sentiments  of  justice  and  charity,  no  religious 
affinities  that  put  them  reaching  after  God  and  things 
above  the  world,  and  no  high  sense  of  being  approved 
by  God  and  other  kindred  beings.  They  make,  in 
short,  no  part  of  a  divine  whole  or  society,  sweetened 


288         GOD   ORGANIZING    IN   THE   CHURCH 

by  the  possession  they  take  of  it,  and  in  being  taken 
possession  of  by  it.  As  being  merely  creatures  made, 
they  are  scarcely  better  than  nobodies  waiting  to  get 
some  consequence,  when  society  arrives  at  them,  and 
they  at  society.  Calling  them  men,  they  are  not  so 
much  whole  natures  related  to  society  outside,  but 
they  own,  as  we  may  say,  scarcely  a  one-tenth  part 
of  their  personality,  and  society  the  other  nine-tenths. 
Or  if  we  conceive  that  they  own  their  complete  whole 
constitutionally,  that  whole,  existing  chiefly  for  society, 
is  chiefly  owned  by  society.  They  are  made  for  soci- 
ety as  a  moral  affair,  and  have  their  property  in  it  as 
being  owned  by  it,  and  morally  configured  to  it.  In 
their  natural  instincts  and  family  affections  and  such 
like  fellow-fondnesses,  they  begin  a  faint  preluding  of 
society  on  the  footing  of  mere  nature ;  but  this  is  only 
the  sign,  so  to  speak,  or  type,  of  that  vaster,  nobler 
society,  which  is  to  be  fulfilled,  under  and  through  the 
great  love-principle  that  claims  their  moral  and  socially 
religious  nature.  In  this  love  principle  they  are 
kindled  as  by  a  kind  of  infinite  aspiration,  wanting 
in  fact  the  whole  universe — all  there  is  in  it,  or  can 
be,  of  righteous  mind — each  to  possess  it,  and  in  the 
possession  be  himself  complete.  And  it  would  even 
pain  them  to  know  that  there  is  or  can  be  any  living 
nature  which  they  can  not  touch,  or  be  touched  by,  any 
society  that  must  be  unrelated  to  them,  in  any  out- 
most world,  or  kingdom  of  God,  known  or  unknown. 
The  principles  that  are  to  organize  the  society  are  of 
course  identical  in  all  worlds,  and  the  love  by  which 


HIS    ETERNAL   SOCIETY.  289 

it  is  organized  is  an  all-worlds'  love.  Hence,  the  soci- 
ety organized  must  be  an  all- worlds'  society. 

Inasmuch  now  as  the  great  society  is  to  be,  and  to 
have  any  real  significance  can  only  be,  a  moral  affair, 
it  will  be  seen  at  once  that  it  could  not  be  organized 
by  mere  natural  constitution.  The  animals  could  have 
a  certain  rudimental  show  of  society  prepared  in  their 
natural  instincts.  But  when  we  speak  of  moral  soci- 
ety as  appointed  for  men,  the  most  that  could  be  done 
for  its  organization  was  to  make  them  capable  of  it — 
capable  that  is  of  acting  themselves  into  it,  in  all  the 
qualities,  and  tempers,  and  divine  principles,  that  com- 
pose it.  They  must  be  capable,  that  is,  of  law,  truth, 
love,  and  sacrifice ;  and  then  the  whole  body  of  the 
society  will  be  fitly  joined  together  and  compacted  by 
that  which  every  joint  supplieth.  Creation  first,  then 
society — this  much  we  say  preparatory  to  any  right 
and  living  conception  of  the  church,  such  as  we  are 
now  after. 

And  here  we  strike  into  the  text  we  began  with, 
proposing  henceforward  to  keep  the  vein  of  it.  It  is, 
we  have  noted  already,  a  kind  of  both-worlds'  Scrip- 
ture, bearing,  as  it  were,  a  church  celestial  and  a 
church  terrestrial  on  the  face  of  its  terms.  And  the 
distinction  of  the  two  is,  that  heaven,  the  upper-world 
church,  is  Society  Organized  ;  and  the  church  below, 
Society  Organizing — both  in  fact  one,  as  regards 
their  final  end  or  object,  and  the  properties  and  prin- 
ciples in  which  they  are  consummated.  Of  course 
the  incomplete  society  below  comprehends  aberrations, 
25 


290         GOD   ORGANIZING   IN   THE   CHURCH 

misconjunctions,  half- conjunctions,  and  a  great  many 
mere  scaffoldings  which  the  other  does  not.  Let  us 
look  now  at  the  two  in  their  order. 

I.  The  Society  Organized.  It  is  called  a  city,  the 
city  of  the  living  God ;  because  it  is  the  most  con- 
densed, completest  form  of  society.  It  also  includes 
or  takes  in  '*  angels  an  innumerable  company,"  some 
of  them,  we  are  to  believe,  from  worlds  more  ancient 
than  ours  and  from  empires  afar  off,  quite  unknown  to 
us.  It  gathers  in  also  "  the  first-born  "  of  the  church, 
and  puts  their  names  in  register  on  the  roll  of  the  grand 
all-worlds'  society.  And  "  the  spirits  of  just  men 
made  perfect,"  are  either  there  or  on  the  way  up,  to 
be  joined  in  the  general  city  life  and  order,  for  which 
they  are  now  made  ready.  All  the  indications  are 
that  a  complete  organization  is  so  far  made,  and  all  its 
distributions  and  relations  adjusted ;  as  when  men  of 
all  grades  and  races  are  gathered  into  and  unified  in, 
the  state  of  city  organization. 

In  this  organized  society  it  is  one  of  the  first  points 
to  be  noted  that  there  is  no  distribution  by  sect  or 
sectarian  names.  Not  even  the  peoples  of  different 
worlds,  and  of  old-time,  gone-by  creations  come  in  as 
sub-societies,  under  names  to  be  maintained  against 
other  names,  though  it  will  not  be  strange  if  matters  so 
grandly  historical  are  somehow  kept  in  memory,  as  by 
calling  these  Uranians,  these  Saturnians,  these  Orion- 
ites,  these  the  Earth-born  people  ;  for  in  being  so  repre- 
sented, they  are  not  antagonized,  but  are  only  made  to 


HIS   ETERNAL   SOCIETY.  291 

show  the  variety  of  their  populations.  Meantime  the 
myriads  that  arrive,  new-comers  from  the  church  be- 
low, drop  off  the  names  of  their  sects,  having  left  them 
in  their  graves  not  raised — for  there  is  no  resurrection 
promised  of  these  names.  They  are  not  Romish  any 
more,  not  Anglican,  not  Calvinistic,  not  Arminian,  or 
"Wesley  an,  their  general  assembly  is  not  the  Presbyte- 
rian^  their  crowns  are  not  brimmed  as  being  Friends, 
and  since  baptism  is  no  more  wanted,  there  are 
no  Baptists.  But  they  are  all  earth's  people  and 
Christian  to  a  man,  all  other  names  being  sunk  and 
forgot  in  their  now  complete  society. 

Again,  the  organization  is  not  bodied  under  official 
magistracies.  There  are  no  pontiffs,  patriarchs,  or 
prelates ;  no  bishops,  priests,  deacons.  Probably  it  was 
so  bodied,  in  what  was  called  the  church  order  below, 
and  the  magistracies  too  were  in  a  large  variety.  But 
the  organization  was  never  in  any  respect  from  them, 
but  from  God  and  the  headship  of  his  Son  ;  in  being 
joined  to  whom — every  man  by  his  faith — the  whole 
body  was  fitly  joined  together  and  became  the  fullness 
of  him  that  filleth  all  in  all.  Still  the  magistracies 
had  their  day  and  their  uses,  not  equally  well  appoint- 
ed, perhaps,  but  sufficiently  authorized  in  all  cases 
when  doing  a  good  work.  They  were  not  mere  straws 
on  the  flood,  and  yet  the  flood  has  moved  directly  on, 
leaving  them  we  know  not  where.  In  the  completed 
society  they  are  all  gone  by  and  forgot,  and  not 
even  ministers,  in  the  cleric  sense,  any  longer  re- 
main— only  all   are  made  priests  unto  God  in  their 


292         GOD   ORGANIZING    IN   THE   CIIURCH 

ransomed  state  of  exaltation,  and  all  do  service  work, 
as  ministers  for  the  common  good  of  all.  I  do  not  by 
this  intend  to  say  that  there  are  no  precedences  in 
stature,  and  personal  "weight,  and  consequent  dignity 
and  power.  The}7  move  in  great  quaternions  doubt- 
less, and  holy  satrapies — thrones,  dominions,  principal- 
ities, powers — but  we  are  only  to  see,  in  this,  that  they 
are  all  regnant  alike  in  their  order,  which  is  what 
these  figures  signify.  Some  of  them  are  as  much 
above  all  priestly  and  pontifical  orders,  and  carry  a 
sway  as  much  more  advanced,  as  they  are  more  tran- 
scendently  advanced  in  thought,  and  weight,  and  char- 
acter. And  yet  they  fall  into  their  places,  unenvied, 
undecried,  there  to  be  admired  and  loved,  and  had  in 
reverence  gladly,  because  they  are  wanted  for  the  per- 
fect society  by  the  humbler  natures  themselves.  In 
one  view  these  more  advanced  ones  are  lifted  into  vir- 
tual leadership,  because  they  have  such  weight  of 
being  and  true  counsel  as  makes  them  leaders  gladly 
accepted. 

It  is  another  point  to  be  observed,  that  there  is  no 
theologic  base  in  the  society  thus  organized.  Because 
the  new  faith  now  is  alive  all  through  in  the  society 
finished  ;  which  is  itself  a  confession  unwritten,  only 
more  full  and  perfect  than  there  could  be  in  any  most 
rugged  articulations  of  doctrine.  They  require  of 
course  to  be  fastened  by  no  bonds  of  catechism  or 
creed,  in  order  to  keep  their  liberty  safe  ;  for  being  the 
truth  themselves  they  can  bear  to  be  free.  Some  of 
us  here  below  are  much  concerned  for  these  matters, 


HIS    ETERNAL   SOCIETY.  293 

much  concerned  for  theology ;  and  perhaps  with  rea- 
son, considering  how  much  of  trammel  is  wanted  to 
keep  organization  safe  among  creatures  that  are  un- 
safe. But  there  is  no  such  concern  above.  Theology 
is  there  even  quite  gone  by,  and  nothing  but  truth 
remains.  And  there  is  more  truth  alive  in  a  single 
one  of  the  now  free  saints,  than  there  ever  was  in  all 
the  fathers,  and  councils,  and  schools  of  the  world. 
These  are  grown  up  now  into  Christ  the  head,  from 
whom  the  whole  body  is  fitly  joined  together. 

But  these  are  negatives  mainly.  Passing  over  then 
to  what  is  more  positive,  we  begin  to  look  after  the 
crystallizing  power  in  which  the  grand  celestial  so- 
ciety is  organized.     And — 

First  of  all  and  at  the  base  of  all  we  find  the 
righteousness  and  love  of  God.  The  righteousness  of 
God  is  God  in  everlasting, '  absolute  right,  and  all 
created  beings  who  are  with  him  in  it,  standing  fast  in 
sinless  integrity,  will  be  organized  by  it,  as  their  com- 
mon inspiration.  For  not  even  they  will  be  self- 
righteous  in  their  integrity,  but  will  have  the  right- 
eousness of  God  by  faith  upon  them — an  everlasting 
■inbreathing,  or  influx,  an  eternal  radiation  from  the 
central  sun — and  be  organized  by  it,  as  the  common 
bliss  of  their  conduct  and  character.  But  as  far  as 
the  great  all-worlds'  society  is  made  up  of  spirits  that 
were  fallen,  these  could  not  be  organized  till  the  right- 
eousness gone  by  is  somehow  restored,  and  become  a 
new  inspiration.  And  here  comes  in  the  love  of  God 
as  the  quickening  grace  of  the  cross,  for  it  is  at  once 
25* 


294:   GOD  ORGANIZING  IN  THE  CHURCH 

the  wonder  of  God's  love,  and  the  organizing  power 
of  it,  that  he  loves  against  all  unloveliness,  loves  what 
offends  him,  what  disgusts  his  feeling,  the  wrong,  the 
cruel,  the  abhorrent,  descending  to  any  bitterest  sacri- 
fice that  he  may  gather  even  such  into  his  family  and 
friendship.  Could  he  only  love  the  lovable  it  would 
not  signify  much  ;  and  not  any  more,  as  respects  or- 
ganization, if  we  should  do  the  same.  The  society 
organized  would  only  be  a  society  of  mutual  admira- 
tion— a  picture  gallery  in  perfect  good  taste  and  no- 
thing more.  !No,  there  is  a  grandly  tragic  side  of 
God's  glory  which  is  not  here.  That  can  only  be 
seen  when  his  love  takes  hold  of  the  bad,  the  wrong, 
the  shameful,  and  defiled,  able  to  suffer  cost  and  be 
redeeming  love.  Only  blood  can  show  these  tragic 
depths  in  God.  Of  course  we  can  not  congratulate 
ourselves  that  we  have  sinned,  but  if  there  be  vast 
orders  of  being,  as  many  think,  who  have  not,  one  can 
not  but  regret  the  very  little  knowledge  they  must 
have  of  what  is  in  the  love  of  God.  All  that  is  deep- 
est, grandest  in  God's  character  must  be  to  them,  so 
far,  a  hidden  book.  And  if  they  have  not  learned 
themselves  to  love,  and  suffer  cost  for  the  bad,  even 
their  noble  integrity  will  leave  them  something  to 
regret,  though  perhaps  they  will  make  up  in  chastity 
what  they  lack  in  experience,  and  obtain  also  by  their 
questions  what  they  have  not  learned  by  defilement 
and  sorrow. 

Again  the  great   all-worlds'  society  is  still  farther 
advanced  in  organization  by  worship.     It  coalesces  in 


HIS   ETERNAL   SOCIETY.  295 

worship ;  and  worship,  as  it  is  the  grandest  felicity,  so 
it  is  the  most  effective  spell  of  organization.  Of 
course  we  do  not  take  the  impression  that  singing 
hymns  about  the  throne  of  God  and  the  Lamb,  is  the 
total  occupation  of  the  everlasting  society.  We  only 
take  such  representations  of  concord  in  song  as  figures 
that  completely  express  the  glorious  harmonies  of  feel- 
ing, and  the  common  felicities  and  homages  by  which 
it  is  swayed.  Worship  is  the  highest  joy  of  mind, 
because  it  is  the  looking  up  to  behold  and  feel  what  is 
highest  and  most  adorably  great.  Thus  we  take  long 
journeys,  to  just  behold  and  feel  what  of  physical 
grandeur  there  may  be  in  a  cataract;  which  feeling  of 
physical  grandeur  is  a  kind  of  natural  worship,  a 
feebly  effective  symbol  of  what  takes  place  in  the 
worship  of  the  adoring,  all-worlds'  society.  And 
in  that  common  joy  of  worship — oftener  silent  prob- 
ably than  expressed — they  are  forever  coalescent  in 
closer  and  more  powerful  bonds,  because  they  feel 
themselves  together  everlastingly  in  it. 

Again  they  have  also  common  works,  no  doubt,  in 
which  they  are  yet  more  practically  organized,  even 
as  a  team  is  brought  into  line  by  the  stress  of  a  com- 
mon draught.  What  their  works  are  we  do  not  know, 
save  as  we  catch  brief  glimpses  here  and  there ;  some- 
times sent  forth  as  for  guard  and  watch,  also  as  cou- 
riers, also  as  convoys  home  of  spirits  departed,  also  to 
be  escort  trains  for  the  Almighty — chariots  of  God 
counting  twenty  thousand,  even  thousands  of  angels. 
One  of  them,  great  Michael,  is  sent  forth   to  head  a 


29(3         GOD   ORGANIZING    IN   THE   CHURCH 

war  against  the  dragon-power  of  persecution,  though 
exactly  what  that  means  we  may  not  know.  Perhaps 
they  go  forth  on  excursions  among  distant  worlds  and 
peoples,  reporting,  for  new  study,  what  of  God  may  be 
discovered  among  them.  Doubtless  they  have  all 
enough  to  do  forever,  and  that  which  is  good  enough 
and  high  enough  for  their  powers. 

They  are  united  and  consolidated  also  in  the  society 
life  by  their  victories ;  for  whether  they  have  van- 
quished all  sin,  or  all  temptation,  or  great  forces  of 
hate  and  cruelty  banded  against  them,  they  come  in 
all  as  victors  bearing  palms,  to  be  organized  by  the 
common  all-hail,  and  the  te  deum  that  celebrates  their 
story.  Indeed  they  come  in  like  an  army  in  register, 
"  the  church  of  the  first-born  whose  names  are  writ- 
ten in  heaven  ;"  and  no  organization  is  so  completely 
made  up  as  one  that  shows  a  complete  register.  As 
God's  register  also  is  true,  there  are  no  hangers  on,  no 
pretenders,  or  doubtful  members.  Their  enrollment  is 
by  inside  knowledge,  and  allows  them  to  know  even  as 
they  are  known. 

And  now  it  only  remains  to  note,  in  this  connection, 
the  very  remarkable  fact,  coincident  with  what  I  said 
at  the  beginning,  that  when  the  Revelator  John  shows 
the  grand  society  emerging  full  organized,  in  his  last 
two  chapters,  you  hardly  know  what  world  it  is  in, 
whether  in  the  upper  descending  upon  this,  or  this 
borne  upward  to  the  other.  No  matter;  enough  that 
now  the  eternal  city-life  is  come,  a  state  of  exact  so- 
ciety, represented  by  the  figure  of  an  exactly  cubal 


HIS    ETERNAL    SOCIETY.  297 

city,  as  many  hundreds  of  miles  high  as  it  is  broad  and 
long.  An  image  that  is  hard  and  violent,  and  yet  on 
the  second  view,  wondrously  significant ;  as  if  society, 
that  loosely-shapen  factor  of  the  creation,  were  be- 
come the  perfect  cube  of  order,  in  exactest  and  most 
solid  measurement. 

Thus  we  sketch,  as  in  stammering  words,  our  con- 
ception of  the  church  above,  the  society  organized ; 
and  from  this  we  descend  to  a  relative  conception — 

II.  Of  the  church  below,  the  Society  Organizing. 
It  is,  in  fact,  the  same  as  the  other,  and  is  pouring  on 
its  trains  continually  to  be  merged  in  that  other,  and 
become  a  part  of  it.  It  is  even  called  a  family — "  of 
whom  the  whole  family  in  heaven  and  earth  is  named." 
Just  as  we  sing  in  our  sublimest  of  all  hymns — 

One  family  we  dwell  in  him, 

One  church  above,  beneath, 
Though  now  divided  by  the  stream, 

The  narrow  stream  of  death. 

One  army  of  the  living  God, 

To  his  command  we  bow, 
Part  of  the  host  have  crossed  the  flood, 

And  part  are  crossing  now. 

The  supposition  here  is,  that  in  what  we  call  the 
church  on  earth,  the  peoples  composing  it  are  being 
organized  in,  or  into,  the  state  of  everlasting  society 
just  now  described. 

And  here  the  first  thing  we  have  to  settle  is,  that 
the  church  is  not  properly  what  we  recognize  under 
this  and  that  formula,  meeting  in  this  and  that  place, 


298         GOD   ORGANIZING   IN    THE    CHURCH 

presided  over,  taught,  confessed,  or  kept  in  discipline, 
by  one  or  another  kind  of  church  magistracy.  The 
church,  as  we  are  now  speaking,  is  what  is  called 
"  the  communion  of  saints,"  and  the  saints  themselves, 
in  their  union  to  Christ,  are  the  staple  matter  of  it — all 
in  training  here  for  the  complete  society.  I  am  not 
questioning,  observe,  the  right  of  their  covenants  and 
cures,  and  forms,  and  ministries,  or  even  of  their  par- 
ishes and  bishoprics  and  councils.  I  only  say  that 
these  are  at  best  only  scaffoldings  all,  and  that  the  real 
import  of  what  they  are,  and  what  they  are  for,  is  in 
the  souls  who  are  training  under  their  husbandry. 
And  they  undoubtedly  have  great  uses  often  in  this 
way.  As  to  there  being  intendancies  divinely  author- 
ized and  the  only  ones  to  be  allowed,  composing,  as  it 
were,  the  whole  church  institute  in  their  own  official 
right  and  sanction — of  all  this  I  know  nothing.  I 
suppose  that  it  would  be  competent  for  any  brother- 
hood, meeting  in  the  Spirit,  if  not  already  organized, 
to  organize  in  what  form,  under  what  offices  and  rules 
they  please,  and  that  in  this  maimer  any  known 
form  of  organization  is  allowable,  even  that  of  the 
Quakers  ;  if  only  they  can  find  how  to  grow  in  it,  and 
make  an  ever-spreading  society  in  the  communion  of 
saints.  These  regimental  machineries  are  none  of 
them  the  church,  they  are  only  the  scaffolding  of  the 
church,  and  are  all  alike  to  be  done  away,  when  that 
which  is  perfect  is  come. 

Furthermore  it  is  difficult  to  admit  that  what  are 
called  sects  have    no  positive  use,  in  the  organizing 


HIS   ETERNAL  SOCIETY.  299 

way.  If  they  are  divisions  and  not  distributions, 
they  are  so  far  evil.  But  if  they  are  only  distribu- 
tions, they  furnish  by  their  mutual  reactions  the  condi- 
tions of  close  thought  and  compact  feeling.  Frictions 
too,  it  may  be,  are  necessary  to  much  life  in  souls 
partly  benumbed  by  sin.  And  besides  it  is  a  fact  not 
often  observed,  that  these  distributions,  under  different 
names,  do  really  help  out  the  enlargement  of  our 
charity.  If  we  stood  related  only  as  individuals  to 
individuals,  our  charities  could  run  out  but  a  little 
way — just  as  far  as  our  acquaintance  runs,  and  no 
farther — but  when  we  push  out  our  charities,  as  in  this 
day  we  are  learning  to  do,  on  so  many  sects,  we  make 
a  sweep  for  them  as  large  as  the  sects  are, — counting 
them  all  in  to  be  the  body  of  Christ,  the  fullness  of 
him  that  filleth  all  in  all. 

But  the  power  that  works  towards  organization — 
let  us  inquire  after  this.  The  lowest  form  of  it  will 
be  seen  in  the  expense,  and  labor,  and  wear  of  contriv- 
ing we  submit  to,  in  the  way  of  providing  preachers 
and  church  edifices.  For  our  whole  strain  of  endeav- 
ors in  this  lowest  key, — in  which  we  make  ourselves 
responsible  with  others  for  the  provisioning  and  per- 
petuating of  the  gospel  institution, — has  a  steadily  con- 
densing efficacy  of  organization  in  it. 

Then  again,  to  go  farther  inward,  our  relations  of 
church  brotherhood  are  a  continual  drill  in  and  for 
society.  In  this  we  are  schooled  in  fact,  into  the  very 
love  of  God;  for  the  whole  body  of  our  fraternity  is 
tinged  with  badness,  troubled  by  disorder,  damaged 


300         GOD    ORGANIZING    IN   THE   CHURCH 

by  sore  faults,  hurt  by  offenses.  Envy  looks  up  with 
bitterness,  pride  looks  down  with  contempt,  jealousy 
looks  every  way  snuffing  the  scent  of  wrongs  that  are 
only  to  be.  Some  are  covetous,  some  are  mean,  some 
are  passionate,  some  are  sensual,  some  are  strong  only 
in  hate,  some  are  weak  only  in  principle.  A  great 
many  things  are  coming  out  thus,  every  hour,  that  are 
very  unlovely,  and  quite  likely  some  of  us  lose  our 
patience  at  times,  and  begin  to  protest  that  the  church 
after  all  is  made  up  of  such  kind  of  material  as  looks 
really  worse  than  the  world.  But  wTe  come  back 
shortly  to  the  living  love  of  God,  and  take  a  new  lesson  ; 
where  it  is  opened  to  us  that  we  ourselves  are  in  this 
divine  society  just  because  it  is  God's  hospital,  where 
he  is  watching  and  nursing  his  poor  morally  broken 
children,  loving  them  never  at  all  for  what  they  are, 
but  only  for  what  he  can  make  them.  And  so  we 
learn  to  love  with  patience,  and  to  bear  even  as  God 
does,  loving  what  we  do  not  like,  and  can  not  approve, 
and  can  only  hope  to  benefit.  The  whole  problem  of 
our  church-life  is  a  problem  of  divine  society  working 
towards  completion. 

Then  again  we  have  the  bad,  outside,  to  work  for ; 
and  here  we  are  drawn  to  the  closest  sympathy  inside, 
that  we  may  find  how  to  gain,  by  our  love,  those  whom 
Christ's  love  died  to  save.  And  this  brings  us  ever 
into  the  closest  sympathy  with  Christ,  so  that  our 
hearts  are  melted  often,  even  as  his  was,  by  our  com- 
passions for  his  rejectors.  Coming  into  this  labor,  as 
we  ought  always  to  be  in  it,  we  are  in  the  closest,  ten- 


HIS   ETERNAL   SOCIETY.  301 

derest  way  of  society.  We  are  even  configured  to 
each  other  as  we  look  in  each  other's  faces,  and  behold 
the  glow  there  kindled.  Our  assemblies  are  all  con- 
tempered  by  the  heat  of  God's  living  sacrifice  for  the 
transgressors.  Are  we  not  so  getting  ready  fast  for 
the  perfect  society  ?     ■ 

I  say  nothing  here  of  our  common  repentances,  and 
common  sorrows,  when  we  find  that  we  have  fallen 
away  from  our  calling.  We  confess  how  much  of  the 
bad  together,  and  our  sorrowing  clears  up,  in  new  discov- 
eries of  what  God  has  undertaken  to  endure  by  his  love. 
So  the  ebb  of  our  tide  brings  on  a  flood  once  more. 

And  then  again,  perhaps,  we  have  our  times  of  in- 
spiration. And  they  are  all  the  more  significant  that 
we  have  them  in  society,  and  have  our  hearts  burning 
in  the  same  divine  fire.  We  sit  in  heavenly  places 
now,  and  have  the  heavenly  good  by  anticipation. 
Our  testimonies  are  bright,  our  songs  make  melody  in 
our  hearts.     Brothers,  is  it  not  good  to  be  here  ! 

The  common  hope  we  have  in  our  brotherhood,  is 
also  a  great  consociating  and  consolidating  power. 
Thus  in  hope,  as  our  apostle  says,  we  are  come  before- 
hand to  the  city  of  God,  the  heavenly  Jerusalem. 
What  we  so  much  hope,  he  imagines  to  be  already 
taken  possession  of,  even  as  it  has  taken  possession  of 
us.  And  then  what  possesses  us  together,  fills  our 
eye,  kindles  our  expectation,  draws  us  towards  or  into 
a  closer  band  of  society.  Even  as  we  sometime  see, 
when  our  birds  of  passage,  hastening  on  to  the  lands 
where  they  summer,  hook  themselves  to  each  other,  as 
26 


302         GOD   ORGANIZING   IN   THE    CHURCH 

the j  fly,  ill  lines  of  order,  pulsing  on  the  air  in  a  com- 
mon time-beat  of  their  wings.  They  fly  as  if  drawn 
by  the  hope  of  a  city,  or  populous  new  nesting-ground 
un visited  by  enemies.  Trail  on  thus,  ye  citizens  to-be 
of  a  city  that  hath  foundations,  knowing  that  your 
blessed  conjunctions  in  hope  will  there  be  issued  in 
society,  everlasting  and  complete. 

But  we  do  not  finish  our  conception  of  this  all- 
worlds'  society,  without  naming  two  points  that  were 
not,  and  could  not  be,  named  before ;  because  we  did 
not  know  the  "  society  organized  "  sharply  enough  to 
see  the  necessity  for  them.  But  we  discover  it  now  in 
the  society  organizing  ;  for  these  two  things,  we  see,  are 
even  made  a  part  of  our  training,  and  go  in,  as  restric- 
tions on  organization,  to  save  us  from  being  totally 
gulfed  by  it.  First  we  must  have  times  of  solitude  and 
spaces  of  withdrawment ;  and  secondly  we  must  have 
the  liberty  of  our  own  thoughts ;  to  keep  them  back, 
or  give  them  out,  or  give  them  by  selection.  There 
must  even  be  room  left  for  opinion.  To  be  always  out 
in  publicity,  to  be  on  parade,  so  to  speak,  everlasting- 
ly, to  have  joys  ventilated  always  by  expression — 
the  same  expression,  or  the  same  roundelay  of  praise — 
would  drug  our  sensibility,  and  become  wearisome  be- 
yond endurance.  We  are  trained  for  no  such  thing. 
Such  perpetual  out-door  life,  such  living  in  transpar- 
ency, would  even  be  intolerable.  The  grand  organiza- 
tion therefore  will  be  perfect,  only  and  because  it  is 
shortened  back  by  fit  limitations  ;  allowing  all  the  in- 
numerable  personalities   to   have   their  own  field  to 


HIS    ETERNAL   SOCIETY.  303 

themselves,  enjoying  themselves  the  more  that  they 
have  ways  of  withdrawment,  and  enjoying  each  other 
the  more,  that  they  have  such  confidence  in  all  as  to 
know,  that  never,  in  their  most  secret  moments,  will 
they  even  think  any  thing,  having  full  power  to  do  it, 
which  is  not  sweet,  and  friendly,  and  right.  Which 
confidence  they  can  have,  because  their  own  thoughts 
have  no  war,  run  to  no  bitterness,  flowing  as  it  were 
in  the  rhythm  of  a  perpetual  hymn. 

Having  outlined,  in  this  manner,  the  society  organ- 
ized, and  the  society  organizing — the  church  above  and 
the  church  below — it  remains  to  distinctly  state  some 
of  the  points  of  benefit  I  have  been  having  in  view; 
which  I  shall  do  in  the  most  nearly  staccato  manner 
possible. 

1.  Let  no  one  disrespect  the  church  because  there  is 
evil  and  sometimes  real  baseness  in  it.  That  is  exact- 
ly what  there  should  be,  and  in  that  works  the  brave 
purpose  God  has  in  it.  What  is  it  but  a  mill  that 
runs  for  the  grinding  out  of  evil  ?  What  enters  here, 
enters  for  love  to  work  in,  and  to  work  upon — such 
love  as  can  have  patience  and  forbear,  and  new-con- 
form  in  good.  Doubtless  God  is  proposing,  in  this,  a 
glorious  church,  not  having  spot,  or  wrinkle,  or  any 
such  thing ;  but  when  it  comes  to  that,  it  will  not  be 
here  and  is  not  meant  to  be.  It  will  be  graduated  and 
brought  home.  And  what  is  there  in  all  this,  but  the 
grandest  possible  title  to  respect  ? 

2.  It  is  neither  wise,  nor  right,  to  be  fastidious  here. 


301         GOD   ORGANIZING   IN   THE   CHURCH 

You  do  not  like  churches,  you  say ;  they  are  not  the 
sort  of  people  here  that  suit  you  best,  and  you  do  not 
like  to  be  brothered  by  all  kinds  of  good  folk  that 
happen  to  be  disagreeable — as  a  great  many  of  them 
are.  And  what  if  God,  and  Christ,  should  have  hap- 
pened to  be  fastidious,  unable  to  love,  and  seek,  and 
bear  the  unworthy — how  would  it  be  even  now  with 
you  ?  Besides,  what  kind  of  world  or  society  are  you 
going  to  hereafter  ?  Is  it  anywhere  provided,  in  the 
good  society  of  God's  kingdom,  that  there  shall  be  no 
little  ones,  no  humble-minded,  no  sweet,  low  children 
of  sorrow  ?  Do  you  not  see,  in  the  very  idea  of  the 
church,  that  your  fastidious  feeling  is  the  very  lowest 
and  most  cruelly  bad  of  all  feeling  ?  What,  on  the 
other  hand,  can  be  more  honorable  to  God,  than  that 
he  is  fashioning  a  great  all-worlds'  society,  that  shall  set 
the  weak  in  due  honor,  and  repay  the  dejections  of  an 
adverse  lot  by  deserved  and  really  great  exaltations. 

3.  It  is  every  good  man's  duty  to  acknowledge  the 
church,  and  be  a  hearty,  faithful  member  in  it.  No, 
you  say,  it  may  be;  for  what  we  call  churches  have 
magistracies,  articles,  laws  of  discipline  and  a  sectarian 
life.  Yes,  and  since  the  society  organizing  is  for  the 
partly  bad,  and  not  for  the  just  made  perfect,  how 
could  it  be  otherwise?  Not  that  these  church  forms 
and  magistracies  are  themselves  organization,  as  we 
often  hear.  The  President  of  the  United  States  and 
all  his  subordinates,  down  to  the  tide-waiters,  do  not 
organize  the  nation.  Not  even  the  laws  organize  it. 
It  is  done,  or  can  be  completely,  only  when  the  people 


HIS   ETERXAL   SOCIETY.  oUo 

are  right,  and  true,  and  just,  and  good,  and  that  with- 
out any  laws.  Meantime  the  magistracies  and  laws 
are  only  hampers,  added  to  substitute  organization, 
where  there  is  none.  Have  you  then  no  duties  to  the 
state  or  nation  ?  So  it  is  your  duty  to  be  openly  joined 
to  the  church  of  God  under  some  frame  of  order  and 
rule.  These  frames  are  only  shells  in  which  the  egg 
is  kept.  Say  not  that  you  belong  to  the  church  uni- 
versal, counting  that  to  be  enough.  Enough,  that  is,  to 
be  an  eo-o-  without  a  shell !  You  are  c-oins:  to  get 
ready,  you  imagine,  for  the  perfect  society  out  of  all 
society,  making  common  cause  with  nobody!  That  is, 
you  are  going  forward  into  the  everlasting  society, 
there  to  meet  no  solitary  creature  with  whom  you 
stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  in  love  and  sacrifice.  For- 
give me  if  I  greatly  mistrust  whether  you  will  meet 
any  one  there  that  knows  you  at  all — save  as  a  con- 
temner of  the  society  from  its  beginning  onward. 

4.  It  ought,  by  this  time,  to  be  clear,  my  brethren, 
that  there  is  no  other  cause,  compact,  institution,  now 
on  foot  in  the  world,  which  is  at  all  comparable  for 
benefit,  and  dignity,  with  the  church  of  God.  It  has 
outlived  the  great  empires,  three  or  four  tiers  of  them 
in  succession.  It  has  created  new  empires,  such  as 
this  of  ours.  It  has  leavened  all  human  society  with 
elements  of  advancement — by  which  educations,  laws, 
liberties,  sciences,  inventions,  constitutions,  have  been 
coming  all  the  while  into  flower.  It  would  take 
whole  hours  just  to  give  the  shining  roll  of  names  that, 
in  worth  and  genius,  and  true  sainthood,  have  been 
26* 


306         GOD   ORGANIZING   IN   THE    CHURCH 

marching  out  into  their  great  history  in  it,  for  these 
almost  nineteen  hundred  years.  The  history,  I  grant, 
is  in  some  sense  an  awful  history,  having,  as  it  were, 
Jacob  and  Esau  struggling  in  it  for  the  birth.  The 
woes  are  sharp,  the  fires  are  hot,  the  prisons  are  burst- 
ing with  wail ;  women-martyrs,  child-martyrs,  the  gen- 
eral bleeding  host  of  persecuted  merit  move  on,  as  it 
were,  in  procession  to  die.  From  age  to  age  it  has 
been  rock,  as  the  Saviour  promised,  to  the  wrath  surg- 
ing heavily  against  it ;  rock,  also,  which  is  yet  more 
strange,  to  the  horrible  rage  of  cruelty  and  crime 
within.  Unable  to  be  shaken  by  either  this  or  that, 
it  still  stands  firm  as  no  political  state  or  kingdom 
could  have  stood,  even  for  a  generation  ;  till  now  we 
see  it  emerging,  as  we  think,  in  the  grace  alone  of  the 
cross  ;  in  that  to  be  full-organized — society  complete — 
everlasting,  universal,  inviolable  brotherhood. 

Do  we  then  some  of  us  ask  what  cause,  engagement, 
work  is  for  us  ?  to  what  we  shall  best  give  our  talents, 
our  inspirable  youth,  our  courage,  our  powers  of  de- 
votement  and  fires  of  sacrifice  ?  *  To  what  surely  sooner 
than  to  the  church  of  God  ?  If  we  have  talents  to 
spend,  where  else  can  we  spend  them  in  a  braver,  more 
unselfish  devotion  ?  And  if  our  talents  are  only  mode- 
rate in  their  measures,  how  shall  we  more  certainly 
enlarge  them  than  to  put  them  at  work  in  God's  meas- 
ures,— in  his  subjects,  his  charities,  his  contemplations 
and  causes — putting  our  whole  nature  at  school  by  his? 
Besides,  the  church    is   everlasting,  the  only  fabric, 

*  Y.  C.  C. 


HIS   ETERNAL   SOCIETY.  307 

structure,  institute,  society  or  state  that  is.  And  O, 
how  grand  a  thing  it  is  that,  going  in  hither,  we  can 
build  ourseives  into  the  eternal.  Against  all  else  a 
statute  runs  of  limitation.  Getting  wealth  we  get  no 
charter  for  breathing.  Getting  fame  we  shall  not  be 
on  hand  to  hear  the  ring  of  it.  Going  into  the  heal- 
ing of  bodies  we  can  only  patch  them  up  for  an  hour. 
Going  into  the  law  we  give  ourselves  to  what  was 
made  last  3Tear,  and  will  be  unmade  the  next.  Public 
honors  vanish,  and  statesmanship  and  states  are  only 
for  a  time,  and  commonly  a  very  short  time.  Not  so 
the  church  of  God,  the  great,  everlasting  all-worlds' 
society ;  that  remains,  and  if  we  put  much  cost  and 
sacrifice  into  it,  all  the  better.  Many  I  know  are 
chaffy  enough  just  now  in  their  conceit  to  prophesy 
the  date  of  it.  Do  they  not  tell  us  it  is  close  at  hand  ? 
Yes,  and  they  shall  see  the  end  of  it  just  when  the  blue 
fades  out  of  the  sky,  when  the  mountains  drink  up  the 
sea,  when  the  heat  of  the  sun  freezes  in,  or  better  still 
when  God's  predestinating  will  breaks  down — then, 
and  not  till  then.  No,  it  exists  for  God's  whole 
future  and  as  long  as  that  will  last.  God  help  us  all 
to  have  our  future  in  it — every  man  established, by  the 
law  of  social  right,  in  that  universal  ownership  con- 
ferred on  each,  by  the  everlasting  society  of  all. 


XVI. 

ROUTINE  OBSERVANCE   INDISPENSABLE. 


"Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread." — Maith.  6:   11. 

We  have  two  opposite  varieties  in  religion  that  are 
about  equally  mistaken  ;  one  that  puts  every  thing  in 
rounds  of  observance,  as  in  fasting  on  Fridays,  and  re- 
peating paternosters  so  many  times  a  day  ;  and  the 
other  in  having  no  times  at  all,  only  doing  acts  of 
duty  and  devotion  as  and  when  we  are  inclined  to  it. 
This  latter  misconception  belongs  more  especially  to 
us  of  the  Protestant  family  ;  though  to  us  not  equally, 
but  in  different  degrees.  We  all  appear  to  be  in- 
dulging ways  of  relaxation  which  we  call  our  advance 
in  liberty.  And  the  more  impatient  of  routine  we 
become,  the  higher  conceptions  we  think  we  are  hold- 
ing of  the  Christian  life.  Falling  away  from  all  fixed 
times  and  rounds  of  observance,  and  learning  to  hold 
them  in  a  certain  disrespect,  we  go  more  clear,  per- 
haps, than  we  mean  to  be,  of  the  sturdy  old  habit  of 
Puritan  law,  and  drop  into  a  looser  way  that  is  more 
agreeable.  And  have  we  not  reasons  to  offer,  that  in- 
dicate advances  made  in  religious  dignity  ?  Are  we 
not  casting  off  our  unnecessary  bondages  ?  And  what 
kind  of  meaning,  or  sincerity  can  there  be  in  ob- 
(308) 


ROUTINE    OBSERVANCE,    ETC.  309 

servances  or  acts  that  we  do  not  feel  inclined  to  ? 
What  moreover  is  prayer  but  a  merely  cringing  way 
in  ns  and  a  real  mockery  to  God,  when  we  are  moved 
to  it  by  no  disposition  to  pray,  but  are  rather  strongly 
disinclined  to  it,  and  set  ourselves  to  the  observance 
only  because  the  prescribed  time  has  come  ?  Family 
prayer,  as  a  daily  observance,  fares  in  the  same  way. 
No  matter  what  the  ground  of  disinclination  may  be 
— circumstance,  convenience,  pressing  engagements — 
why  make  an  unalterably  fixed  ordinance  of  it,  even 
for  the  children's  sake,  when,  at  any  rate,  God  will 
bring  up  his  sun,  and  load  the  morning  table  with 
food,  and  set  his  flowers  blooming  at  the  door — all 
punctual  and  true  to  their  times  ?  So  in  matters  of 
charity,  so  in  church-going,  so  in  the  stated  times  of 
conference  and  prayer ;  and  then  why  not  so  in  the 
going  to  school  of  the  children,  and  their  punctual 
times  of  returning,  in  their  street  hours  for  the  even- 
ing, and  their  late  hours  running  into  even  the  far  oft 
times  of  the  night. 

What  I  now  undertake  therefore  is  to  show  the  ne- 
cessity, in  religion,  of  a  more  or  less  rigidly  appointed 
routine  practice ;  beginning  at  the  petition  cited  from 
the  prayer  which  our  Lord  gave  his  disciples — "  give 
us  this  da}^  our  daily  bread."  We  do  not  really  un- 
derstand him,  unless  we  distinguish  a  mental  reference 
in  his  words,  to  the  customary  observance  of  morning 
prayer.  For  it  is  a  prayer  for  each  morning  that  he 
gives ;  a  daily  prayer  for  daily  bread,  even  for  this 
day's  bread.     To  offer  this  prayer,  therefore,  as  many 


310  ROUTINE    OBSERVANCE 

do,  after  the  day  or  every  repast  of  the  day  is  fin- 
ished, is  to  make  it  a  thing  for  the  form,  when  it  is 
nothing  in  the  fact ;  which  is  about  the  worst  dis- 
honor that  could  any  way  be  done  it.  The  sup- 
position is  that  the  soul  is  to  have  every  morning,  as  a 
sunrise  of  religion — punctual  and  bright  as  the  morn- 
ing. Conceiving  a  prayer  to  be  used  for  the  noon  or 
the  evening — even  as  the  Psalmist  says,  "  evening 
and  morning  and  noon  will  I  pray,"  he  would  cer- 
tainly have  done  what  the  Psalmist  did,  adapted  his 
prayer  to  its  time.  At  any  rate  nothing  was  farther 
plainly  from  his  thought,  than  to  say,  "  pray  when 
you  have  a  mind  to  it,  and  let  it  pass  when  you  have 
not."  Whether  he  means  his  prayer  to  be  used  every 
morning  or  not,  he  does,  at  least,  give  honor  and  sanc- 
tion to  the  daily  observance  of  morning  prayer.  And 
it  is  under  his  sanction,  thus  given,  that  I  draw  out 
now,  for  your  consideration,  this  great  law  of  practical 
christian  living — 

That  we  need  to  keep  fixed  times,  or  appointed  rounds  of 
observance,  as  truly  as  to  be  in  holy  impulse  ;  to  have  pre- 
scribed periods  in  duty  as  truly  as  to  have  a  spirit  of  duty  ; 
to  be  in  the  drill  of  observance,  as  well  as  in  the  liberty  of 
faith. 

In  other  words,  I  am  to  show  the  place  of  what  we 
sometimes  call  routine  in  religion,  and  as  we  are  con- 
stituted, the  profound  necessity  for  it.  And  by  way 
of  preparing  you  to  a  just  impression  of  the  subject,  I 
ask  you — 

1.  To  notice  the  very  obvious  fact  that  the  argu- 


INDISPENSABLE.  311 

ment  commonly  stated,  as  against  the  obligation  of 
fixed  times  and  ways  of  observance  in  religion,  con- 
tains a  fatal  oversight.  It  is  very  true  that  mere 
rounds  of  observance,  however  faithfully  kept,  have 
in  themselves  no  value,  nothing  of  the  substance  of 
piety  ;  but  they  have  an  immense  value,  when  kept 
and  meant  to  be,  as  the  means  of  piety.  It  is  equally 
true  that  nothing  is  acceptable  to  God,  which  is  not 
an  offering  of  the  heart.  But  it  does  not  follow,  by 
any  means,  that  we  are  therefore  to  wait,  doing  noth- 
ing till  the  inclinations  or  impulses  of  the  heart  are 
ready.  Thus,  when  the  disciple  says,  "  Why  should  I 
attempt  to  pray  %  what  is  my  prayer  but  mockery, 
when  I  go  to  it  by  fixed  times  without  or  against  in- 
clination ?" — he  overlooks  entirely  what  belongs  to  the 
very  economy  of  prayer,  and  constitutes  its  highest 
practical  value  ;  viz.,  that  not  being  an  exercise  to 
merely  play  out  impulse  and  inclination,  it  is  also  an 
exercise  to  kindle  impulse  and  beget  inclination. 
This,  in  fact,  is  the  very  particular  blessing  of  it,  that 
when  we  are  averted  from  it  and  slacked  in  all  our  in- 
clinations towards  it,  we  may  still  get  our  fire  kindled 
by  it.  "When  we  go  to  it,  therefore,  by  fixed  times  of 
observance,  we  do  just  what  is  necessary  to  beget 
fixed  inclinations,  and  train  the  soul  into  a  habit  of 
abiding  impulse.  Otherwise,  or  desisting  because  we 
have  no  inclination,  we  consent  to  have  no  inclination, 
but  that  which  wavers  fitfully,  and  probably,  at  last, 
no  inclination  at  all.  The  whole  argument  turns  here 
just  as  it  does  in  other  matters.     There   is  no  genuine 


312  ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE 

prayer,  for  example,  that  is  not  offered  in  the  Spirit, 
and  yet  God  promises  the  Holy  Spirit  to  them  that 
ask  him.  Shall  we  then  decline  to  ask  because  we 
have  not  the  Spirit  already,  and  because  such  kind  of 
asking  will  be  only  mockery  !  No !  for  the  very  de- 
sign of  God  is  to  meet  us  in  the  asking,  and  to  enter 
his  Spirit  into  the  asking  itself.  He  puts  us  to  the 
asking  for  the  purpose  of  getting  us  open  to  the  Spirit, 
and  accessible  to  his  holy  inspirations.  We  go  to  ob- 
tain inspirations,  inclinations,  gales  of  impulse,  and 
not  simply  to  play  out  such  as  we  have  already. 
Nothing  in  this  view  is  weaker,  more  unpractical, 
closer  to  a  shallow  dissipation,  more  certain  to  end  in 
a  dreadful  collapse  in  character,  than  this  most  treach- 
erous doctrine,  which  makes  it  even  a  law,  that  we 
surrender  every  thing  to  our  inclinations.  Let  me 
ask  your  attention  now — 

2.  To  the  grand  analogies  of  time  and  routine 
movement  in  the  world  you  live  in.  Nature  is,  on 
one  hand,  a  world  of  routine  or  of  prescribed  times 
and  recurrences,  and  on  the  other  a  realm  of  versatile 
changes  and  endlessly  varied  occasions  or  appearances. 
The  days  and  years,  the  moon  and  tides,  the  mornings 
and  evenings,  the  eclipses  and  even  wandering  comets, 
have  their  times  exactly  set,  and  their  rounds  exactly 
measured.  We  can  even  make  up  their  almanac  for  the 
most  distant  ages  and  cycles.  What  we  call  the  al- 
manac is,  in  fact,  an  exhibition  to  the  eye,  of  the  grand 
principle  of  routine  in  nature.  So  far  the  vast  empire 
of  being  is  grounded  in  a  sublime  principle  of  routine 


INDISPENSABLE.  813 

everywhere  manifest ;  it  is  ordained  for  signs,  and  for 
seasons,  and  for  days  and  years.  And  without  this, 
or  apart  from  this,  it  would  be  only  a  medley  of  eon- 
fusion,  a  chaos  of  interminable  disorder.  What  could 
we  do  in  a  world  where  there  are  no.  appointed  times, 
no  calculable  recurrences,  no  grand  punctualities, 
where  the  seasons  are  moved  in  different  orders  of  suc- 
cessions, days  and  nights  coming  at  random,  and  stay- 
ing for  such  time  as  they  please,  the  heavenly  bodies  a 
chapter  of  celestial  accidents  in  their  motions,  the 
moon  quartering  once  a  month,  or  ten  times  a  month, 
the  tides  rising  with  or  without  the  moon,  the  dews 
falling  on  the  snows,  and  the  snows  on  the  verdure  of 
June — such  a  world  would  really  be  valueless;  we 
could  do  nothing  with  it,  and  simply  because  it  has  no 
fixed  times.  And  for  just  this  reason  God  has  con- 
sented to  inaugurate  the  sublime  routine  necessary  to 
its  uses,  determining  the  times  before  appointed,  and 
the  bounds  of  our  habitation. 

And  so  very  close  does  God  come  to  us  in  this  mat- 
ter of  times  or  of  natural  routine,  that  our  heart  beats 
punctually  in  it,  our  breath  heaves  in  it  like  the  panting 
tides  of  the  ocean,  and  the  body  itself,  and  with  it  also 
the  mind,  yes  even  the  mind,  is  a  day's  man  only  in 
'its  power,  a  creature  of  waking  and  sleeping,  of  alter- 
'nating  consciousness  and  unconsciousness,  like  the 
solar  day  and  night  of  the  world. 

And  yet  some  can  not  think  it  a  matter  sufficiently 
dignified  to  have  any  prescribed  times  in  religion. 
Though  God  himself  is  a  being  of  routine,  though  the 
27 


314  ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE 

everlasting  worlds  are  bedded  in  routine,  though  their 
very  bodies  and  minds  are  timed  in  it,  like  a  watch, 
or  the  earth's  revolution,  still  they  are  jealous  of  any 
such  thing  in  religion,  and  refuse  it,  as  an  infringe- 
ment on  their  liberty  !  Is  this,  I  ask,  the  lesson  which 
they  draw  from  the  great  teacher  in  whose  bosom  they 
live  ?  And  if  the  world  itself,  apart  from  its  fixed 
rounds,  or  prescribed  times,  were  only  an  uninhabit- 
able chaos,  what  greater  value  is  there  like  to  be,  in 
their  own  acts  and  doings,  when  there  is  no  fixed  time 
for  doing  any  thing. 

3.  I  refer  you  again  to  the  analogy  of  your  own 
courses  in  other  things,  and  also  to  the  general  analo- 
gies of  business.  As  we  are  by  nature  diurnal  crea- 
tures in  the  matter  of  waking  and  sleep,  so  we  are 
voluntarily  creatures  of  routine  and  of  fixed  hours  in 
the  matter  of  food.  In  this  respect  the  wild  Indians 
of  the  forest  differ,  we  are  told,  from  us — eating  im- 
mensely when  it  is  convenient,  or  the  necessary  game 
is  taken,  and  then  fasting  even  to  the* door  of  starva- 
tion, till  the  fortune  of  the  hunt  brings  another 
supply.  We,  on  the  other  hand,  have  our  appointed 
times — just  so  many  times  of  repast  each  day,  at  an 
exact  hour  by  the  clock — and  we  take  it  as  a  hardship, 
or  a  constraint  on  our  liberty,  if  we  are  obliged,  by 
any  circumstance  or  pressure,  to  fail  of  our  time. 
"Which  then  do  we  suppose  to  be  in  the  best  conditions 
of  comfort,  dignity,  and  good  keeping,  the  savage 
tribes  that  have  no  times,  or  we  that  feed  in  the  exact 
routine  of  the  civilized  table  ?     How  is  it  also  in  the 


INDISPENSABLE.  315 

matter  of  business,  or  the  transactions  of  trade  and  in- 
dustry ?  What  figure  of  success  will  any  man  make 
in  business,  who  has  no  fixed  hours  ;  who  goes  to  his 
work,  or  sends  out  his  men,  at  any  and  all  hours  of 
the  day — five  o'clock,  or  ten,  or  two,  as  best  suits  his 
convenience,  and  despises  the  oppressive  and  slavish 
law  of  prescribed  times — as  if  a  man  who  respects 
himself  could  submit  to  be  wheeled  on  through  his 
works  by  the  tick  of  the  watch,  or  to  keep  time  with 
the  shadows  of  the  sun !  Or  suppose  he  is  equally 
averse  to  the  bondage  of  times  in  his  engagements, 
gathering  his  dues  when  they  chance  to  come,  ex- 
pecting his  interest  money  at  just  such  times  as  he 
pleases,  and  paying  his  notes  when  it  is  convenient — • 
will  such  a  man  succeed,  or  will  he  find  that  in  re* 
fusing  any  law  in  times  he  refuses  all  success,  all 
credit,  name  and  character.  If  then  there  is  nothing 
men  do  with  effect  in  the  world  of  business,  despising 
the  law  of  times,  how  does  it  happen  that  they  can 
expect,  with  any  better  reason,  to  succeed  in  the  mat- 
ter of  their  religion — their  graces,  charities,  and 
prayers  ?  Wherein  does  it  appear  to  be  absurd,  to 
assume  that  the  soul  wants  times  of  feedino-  as  rejm- 
lar,  and  frequent,  and  punctual,  as  the  body  ?  Again, 
4.  Consider  the  reason  of  the  Sabbath,  where  it  is 
assumed  that  men  are  creatures,  religiously  speaking, 
of  routine,  wanting  it  as  much  as  they  do  principles, 
fixed  times  as  much  as  liberty.  Indeed  a  very  con- 
siderable part  of  the  value  of  the  Sabbath  consists  in 
the  drill  of  its  times ;  that  it  comes  when  we  do  not 


316  ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE 

ask  for  it,  commands  us  to  stop  when  we  desire  to  go 
on,  calls  ns  off  to  worship  by  a  summons  astronomic- 
ally timed,  "and  measured  by  the  revolutions  of  the 
world.  In  this  view  it  is,  I  conceive,  that  the  fourth 
commandment  is  set  in  the  decalogue.  The  design  is 
to  place  order  in  the  same  rank  with  principle,  and 
give  it  honor  in  all  coming  ages,  as  a  necessary  ele- 
ment of  religion,  or  the  religious  life  and  character. 
And  what  we  discover  in  the  reason  of  the  Sabbath 
holds  equally  well  of  other  observances  and  duties. 
As  we  are  creatures  of  impulse,  inspiration,  liberty, 
so  also  we  are  creatures  of  drill,  and  there  was  no  way 
to  perfect  or  establish  us  in  any  thing,  unless  we  could 
be  required  to  do  what  we  are  not  inclined  to  do ;  to 
appoint  our  times  of  prayer,  keep  ourselves  in  rounds 
of  observance,  and  hold  fast  in  the  punctual  discipline 
of  times. 

Indeed  we  could  not  have  any  fixed  appointment  of 
public  worship,  or  common  prayer  at  all,  under  the 
mischievous  doctrine  I  am  contending  against.  There 
is  no  true  worship,  I  agree,  in  public  more  than  any 
where  else,  unless  the  heart  is  in  it.  Why  then 
should  we  give  attendance,  you  may  ask,  in  public 
worship,  when  we  have  no  heart  in  it  ?  Why  keep 
one  day  in  seven,  if  we  have  no  inclination  for  it? 
And  so  common  worship  goes  down,  the  prayer  meet- 
ing falls  out  of  possibility,  and  all  the  powerful  means 
of  piety  thus  ordered  are  even  lost  to  the  world. 

5.  The  Scriptures  recognize  the  value  of  prescribed 
times  and  a  fixed  routine  of  duty,  in  other  ways  more 


INDISPENSABLE.  317 

numerous  than  can  be  well  recounted.  Thus  in  the 
old  religion,  the  sacrifices,  the  great  feasts  or  festivals, 
all  the  observances  and  forms  had  a  fixed  rotation, 
and  the  power  of  a  military  drill  on  the  mind  of  the 
people.  The  entire  calendar,  in  fact,  was  set  off  in 
sevens  of  days,  and  years,  and  the  sacred  number 
seven  was  carried  so  far  that  even  the  march  about  Jer- 
icho was  to  be  in  it,  in  order  to  the  mystic  sevenfolding 
under  God  that  winds  up  the  spell  of  its  fall.  The  holy 
men  had  all  their  times  ;  one  was  accustomed  to  ob- 
serve the  sacred  number  in  his  worship,  having  it  seven 
times  a  day,  as  the  fixed  order  of  his  life.  Another 
went  to  prayer  three  times  a  day.  In  the  New  Testa- 
ment the  observance  of  fixed  times  appears  less  dis- 
tinctly ;  and  partly  because  many  of  the  zealots  and 
precisionists  made  a  righteousness  of  their  observ- 
ances, apart  from  any  meaning  or  honest  purpose  in 
them.  Wherefore  Paul  was  obliged  even  to  rebuke 
this  kind  of  superstition — "  the  observing  days,  and 
months,  and  times,  and  years,"  the  respecting  "  holy 
days,  new  moons,  and  Sabbaths."  To  break  up  this 
subjection  to  ordinances,  the  new  religion  even  went 
so  far  as  to  abolish  the  seventh  day.  Not  however 
because  the  routine  was  itself  evil ;  for  the  first  day 
was,  at  the  same  time,  substituted  as  a  time  of  stated 
worship.  The  object  was  to  strip  away  the  bondage 
that  had  come  to  be  an  oppression,  because  it  was  a 
superstition — in  that  view  a  beggarly  element.  And 
that  only  this  was  the  object  is  made  clear,  in  the  fact 
that  Christ  himself,  in  the  interval  between  his  resur- 
21* 


318  ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE 

reetion  and  ascension,  keeps  day  with  his  disciples, 
meeting  them  by  a  weekly  manifestation  of  his  pres- 
ence, as  if  purposely  to  give  them  stated  times — even 
as  he  had  taught  them  in  his  first  sermon  to  have 
each  day  their  time  of  prayer,  saying,  "  Give  us  this 
day  our  daily  bread."  All  the  teachers  after  him 
made  it  a  point,  in  the  same  manner,  to  institute  a 
piety  whose  rule  is  order,  and  whose  liberty  itself  is 
regularity.  Thus  John  is  in  the  Spirit,  and  meets  the 
vision  even  of  his  prophecy  on  the  Lord's  day.  Paul 
observes  that  day,  and  gives  it  as  a  good  rule  to  lay 
by  what  may  go  for  charity  on  that  day,  that  so  there 
may  be  order  in  charity  ;  remembering,  also,  in  the 
very  chapter  that  forbids  the  observance  of  holy  days, 
new  moons,  and  Sabbaths,  to  commend  the  brethren, 
"  as  joying  and  beholding  their  order,  and  the  stead- 
fastness [or  regular  working]  of  their  faith."  Had 
they  no  fixed  times  and  rounds  of  duty,  doing  every 
thing  by  impulse  or  fancy  or  caprice,  he  would  have 
found  any  thing  but  order  to  rejoice  in.     Which — 

Again  brings  me  to  say  that  if  we  have  no  times  in 
religion  but  such  as  we  take  by  mere  impulse,  or  in- 
clination, we  shall  fall  away,  at  last,  from  all  times 
and  all  duties.  Let  any  one  take  the  ground,  for  ex- 
ample, that  he  will  never  pray  except  when  he  is 
drawn  to  it,  and  he  will  less  and  less  frequently  be 
drawn.  If  any  one  tells  me  that  he  can  not  pray, 
when  he  is  disinclined,  or  not  moved  to  it,  and  would 
feel  it  even  to  be  an  act  of  insincerity,  I  understand 
that  he  prays  very  seldom,  and  perhaps  never.     Such 


INDISPENSABLE.  319 

a  rule  of  prayer  would  gradually  let  down  the  best 
Christian,  and  finally  take  him  quite  away  from  the 
exercise.  In  his  ordinary  state  he  may  have  been 
commonly  inclined  to  the  exercise.  But  there  will 
be  times  when  he  is  not,  and  then,  if  instead  of  gird- 
ing himself  to  what  interest  he  may  find,  he  yields  to 
his  mere  self-indulgence,  that  self-indulgence  will  rot 
away  his  confidence,  exterminate  his  peace,  turn  itself 
into  habitual  disinclination,  and  so,  by  a  fixed  law, 
put  an  end  to  his  praying  altogether.  Doubtless  he 
will  have  a  great  many  plausible  reasons  to  comfort 
him,  as  lie  goes  down  the  descent,  but  the  descent  he 
will  make.  Though  he  is  now  sure  he  practices  no  in- 
sincerity, and  does  not  force  himself  in  that  which 
ought  to  be  free,  he  will  also  be  as  clear,  that  he  has 
not  the  nearness  to  God  he  once  had,  and  is  losing  the 
relish  of  God's  friendship,  by  which  he  once  was 
drawn  so  fondly  to  the  exercise. 

After  all,  however  plausibly  we  may  reason  about 
forced  exercises,  or  a  want  of  sincerity  in  them,  we 
have  really  never  any  great  sincerity  where  we  do  not 
sometimes  cross  our  inclinations,  by  the  salutary  com- 
pulsion of  prescribed  times  and  duties.  A  scholar  is 
not  in  the  true  idea  of  scholarship,  till  he  becomes 
able  to  bury  himself  in  study  for  the  pure  love  of 
knowledge.  But  no  scholar  ever  comes  to  that,  who 
does  not  put  on  the  harness  of  work,  and  set  himself 
to  the  drill  of  regularity,  and  the  fixed  routine  of  the 
class  or  the  school.  A  merchant  is  never  deep  enough 
in  his  engagement  to    have  any  title  to  success,  or 


320  ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE 

chance  of  it,  who  does  not  set  his  times  and  proceed 
by  system,  and  when  he  feels  a  little  disinclination, 
does  not  nse  compulsion  enough  to  hold  himself  to 
his  engagements.  And  if  he  has  not  manliness 
enough  or  energy  enough  in  him  to  do  this,  we  take  it 
for  granted  that  there  is  no  earnestness  in  his  engage- 
ment, and  never  can  be  any  real  success.  In  fact,  no 
man  ever  does  any  thing  which  he  has  no  times  for 
doing.  And  if  a  man  is  too  delicate  to  suffer  any 
fixed  times  in  religion,  it  will  fare  with  him  as  it  does 
with  other  men,  who  are  always  about  to  do  some 
great  thing,  but  never  find  the  time  for  executing 
their  romantic  intentions. 

Once  more  the  true  way  to  come  into  liberty  and 
keep  ourselves  in  it,  is  to  have  our  prescribed  rules, 
and  in  some  respects,  at  least,  a  fixed  routine  of 
duties.  I  do  not  say  or  suppose  that  a  mere  round  of 
repetitions  can  accomplish  any  thing,  or  that  any 
mere  observance  of  times  and  years  can,  of  itself,  pro- 
duce in  a  soul  the  grace  of  a  true  discipleship.  Noth- 
ing done  as  a  matter  of  mere  observance  is  better 
than  the  fasting  Pharisaically  twice  in  a  week,  which 
Christ  condemned.  But  if  any  Pharisee  had  taken  it 
upon  him  to  fast  twice  in  a  week,  not  for  the  merit  of 
the  fasting,  but  to  have  it  as  a  means  and  exercise  of 
repentance,  looking  unto  God,  in  the  engagement,  for 
grace  to  make  it  effectual  in  the  renovation  of  his  life, 
no  matter  how  distant  he  may  have  been  at  the  be- 
ginning, from  the  state  of  faith  and  liberty,  he  would 
assuredly  have   found   a   living  grace   of  piety  in  it. 


INDISPENSABLE.  321 

Many  a  child  brought  up  to  begin  and  close  each  day 
with  prayer,  is  guided  by  that  simple  routine  exercise, 
connected  with  the  other  influences  of  life,  into  the 
true  spirit  of  a  disciple,  and  grows  up  in  the  kingdom 
as  one  imperceptibly  initiated.  Let  any  most  dull  and 
wrorldly- minded  christian  gather  himself  up  to  the 
established  rule  of  prayer  for  three  times,  twice,  or 
even  once  a  day,  determined  not  to  have  it  as  a  mere 
observance,  but  as  an  exercise  of  grace  and  practical 
waiting  on  God,  and  it  will  not  be  long  before  he  is 
truly  restored  and  walks  in  liberty.  So  that  if  we 
grant  the  inherent  defect  of  any  and  all  prayers  in 
which  there  is  nothing  better  than  a  forced  exercise, 
no  impulse,  no  liberty,  the  true  way  to  be  in  liberty 
and  be  kept  habitually  there,  is  to  live  in  that  holy 
routine  which  is  the  bond  of  all  true  application,  and 
the  certain  method  of  all  earnestness  and  fidelity.  And 
accordingly  it  will  be  found,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that 
they  who  are  readiest  to  endure  hardness,  and  have  least 
delicacy  about  forcing  themselves  in  constrained  ex- 
ercises, have  really  most  liberty,  live  closest  to  God, 
enjoy  most  of  his  smile,  and  as  they  keep  up  the 
rounds  of  duty  most  faithfully,  will  have  really  least 
feeling  of  constraint,  or  even  think  of  it  as  no  con- 
straint at  all. 

I  need  not  undertake  to  show  you  how  exactly  wrhat 
I  am  here  saying  is  borne  out  by  the  experiences  of 
holy  men.  I  will  simply  note  one  or  two  examples. 
Thus  when  you  find  young  Taylor  recording  it  as  his 
rule,  "  the  last  thing  before  retiring  every  night,  to 


322  ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE 

commit  t»  memory  a  portion  of  scripture,  and  re- 
joicing in  the  computation  of  what  this  may  amount 
to  in  eight  years,"  the  time  of  his  preparation,  now 
begun,  for  the  ministry,  you  will  discover  that  spirit 
of  application  that  augurs  infallible  success.  And 
this  is  not  the  man  to  wear  out  his  life  in  a  drill  of 
legalities,  but  he  will  be  one  of  the  freest,  most  joyful 
and  jubilant  of  the  saints.  So  also  when  you  find  a 
Jonathan  Edwards,  at  the  age  of  twenty,  recording  it 
as  one  of  his  fixed  resolutions — "  Resolved  to  ask  my- 
self at  the  end  of  every  day,  week,  month  and  year, 
wherein  I  could  possibly,  in  any  respect,  have  done 
better,"  you  may  see  a  great  mind  engineering  in  the 
solemn  routine  of  appointed  times  and  fixed  methods, 
to  keep  himself  in  the  way  of  fidelity  ;  so  to  be  a  liv- 
ing and  free  soul  in  the  faith,  and  fill  up  his  life  with 
holy  impulse,  and  cover  it  with  the  radiance  of  God's 
free  manifestation.  Few  men  have  enjoyed  more  of 
God  on  earth,  or  been  less  drudged  by  the  punctuality 
and  system  in  which  he  so  cautiously  lived.  There  is, 
I  know,  such  a  thing  as  a  legal,  barren,  painful  ob- 
servance, which  like  the  sorrow  of  the  world  worketh 
death,  just  as  there  are  martinets  in  place  of  com- 
manders, and  regiments  in  drill  that  will  be  cowards 
in  the  fight,  but  of  this  we  may  be  sure,  there  never 
was  or  will  be  a  successful  man  in  any  thing,  least  of 
all  in  religion,  who  can  not  gird  himself  to  applica- 
tion by  some  fixed  rules  and  times  of  action. 

I  regard  this  subject,  my  brethren,  as  one  that  has  a 


INDISPENSABLE.  323 

most  intimate  and  vital  connection  with  all  sound  ad- 
vance or  possibility  of  advance  in  your  Christian  life. 
Most  true  it  is  that  God  has  no  pleasure  in  any  mere 
formalities  or  observances  you  can  offer  him.  He  de- 
mands the  heart,  he  looks  with  respect  and  favor  on 
no  tribute  which  is  not  the  tribute  of  the  heart's  free- 
dom— unless  it  be  that  he  lovingly  draws  nigh  to 
them  that  are  pining  and  sighing  for  the  want  of  such 
a  gift.  It  is  no  tread-mill  service  of  routine  that  wins 
you  his  friendship.  Inspiration,  impulse,  liberty,  a 
service  of  freedom  and  gladness,  this  only  is  his  de- 
light. But  in  order  to  this,  there  must  also  be  sub- 
jection  to  his  rule,  a  systematic  care,  a  prescribed 
obedience  of  duty,  a  holy  drill  of  times  patiently  ac- 
cepted. The  way  to  find  liberty  is  to  come  into  the 
schooling  of  order  and  law,  and  let  our  will  be  har- 
nessed in  a  punctual  keeping  of  holy  times. 

Have  you  never  observed  that  where  there  is  no 
order,  there  is  no  piety ;  or  if  any,  none  but  such  as 
represents  the  confusion,  the  irresponsibility,  the  loose- 
ness and  chaotic  chance-work  of  the  life  ? 

You  have  noticed  with  wonder  and  sorrow,  it  may  be, 
the  fact  that  so  many  Christians  have  no  reliable  exact- 
ness in  their  dealings  with  their  fellow-men.  It  is  partly 
because  they  have  no  exactness  with  God.  They  are 
loose  in  their  representations,  grazing  close  upon  the 
gates  of  falsehood,  and  sometimes  hard  against  them. 
They  are  not  reliable.  They  are  as  loose  in  their 
times  and  engagements  as  in  their  statements.  Their 
honor  is  not  maintained.     And  the  reason  is  that  they 


324  ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE 

are  loose  with  God.  They  do  not  keep  their  vows. 
They  have  do  times  of  prayer.  They  let  their  life 
float  on  as  it  may,  or  as  self-indulgence  or  convenience 
will  determine.  There  is,  in  fact,  a  very  close  sym- 
pathy between  punctuality  in  routine,  and  exactness 
in  principle,  such  that  no  man  will  ever  be  a  man  of 
principle  who  has  no  times.  And  then  again  there  is 
a  sympathy  equally  close,  between  high  principle  and 
God,  for  it  is  only  a  very  exact  conscience  that  is 
capable  of  a  sharp  confidence,  and  then  it  is  only  a 
delicately  sharp  confidence  towards  God  that  can  have 
a  clear  and  glorious  access  to  his  presence  and  his 
smile. 

If  a  Christian  shuns  routine,  therefore,  having  no 
times  of  prayer,  observing  with  his  brethren  no  ap- 
pointments of  prayer,  praying  in  his  family  only  now 
and  then,  or  perhaps  never,  because  he  may  not  al- 
ways be  inclined  to  it,  you  can  easily  see  why  he  will 
get  on  poorly  in  his  piety,  and  why  his  light  will  be 
darkness.  Because  his  conscience  will  be  loose,  and 
his  confidence  low,  and  his  will  in  no  keeping,  and  as 
no  pains  are  taken  for  Christ,  no  sacrifices  made,  no 
fidelity  observed,  he  will  of  course  be  as  ignorant  of 
liberty  as  he  is  ambiguous  in  duty. 

Brethren,  how  is  it  with  you  in  this  matter  ?  Do 
you  live  in  the  girdle  of  law  or  without  ?  Do  you 
give  your  charities  when  some  fit  of  the  impulse  takes 
you,  or  when  some  hard  importunity  presses  you,  or 
do  you  try  to  settle  carefully  before  God  your  meas- 
ures,  and   times,   and   objects?     Do  you  have  your 


INDISPENSABLE.  325 

times  of  prayer,  and  keep  them,  cost  what  it  may,  or 
do  you  pray  by  the  rule  of  inclination  or  conve- 
nience ?  Do  you  keep  time  with  your  brethren,  in 
their  weekly  hour  of  prayer,  or  do  you  fall  in  late, 
or  fall  utterly  away — excusing  yourself  from  attend- 
ance because  the  place  is  dull,  making  it  more  dull 
by  a  lack  of  attendance  ?  Do  you  lag  and  grow  slack 
everywhere,  and  contrive  to  think  you  are  waiting  for 
God  to  give  you  appetite  ? — such  waiting  will  be  long 
before  it  wins.  If  the  sun  waited  below  the  horizon 
for  fair  weather,  fair  weather  would  certainly  wait  for 
the  sun.  Ah,  it  is  a  greater  thing  than  you  imagine 
to  stand  fast  in  your  order,  and  the  system  of  a  faith- 
ful life.  Half  the  benefit  you  get  in  holy  times,  and 
punctualities,  lies  in  the  fact  that  for  Christ's  sake 
you  keep  them.  You  can  not  be  too  rigid  in  this 
matter.  A  loose  way  makes  a  loose  man.  Prove 
your  fidelity  by  your  painstaking,  and  it  will  be 
strange  if  you  do  not  stand  fast  even  though  you 
stand  alone — blessed  and  great  honor  this,  to  stand 
alone  !  Such  a  man  has  no  dull  time  any  where,  his 
inspiration  is  full,  his  confidence  sure,  his  peace  the 
calm  deep  flow  of  a  river. 

I  knew  a  man  of  fortune,  whose  business  was  a 
care  equal  to  a  small  kingdom,  and  who  had  it  as 
the  rule  of  his  life,  to  be  always  up  in  the  morning 
before  the  day,  or  by  the  early  dawn,  and  to  spend 
one  or  two  hours  in  the  exclusive  exercises  of  re- 
ligion— reading,  meditation,  and  prayer.  The  result 
was  that  what  was  begun  as  a  law,  became,  in  a 
28 


326  ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE 

short  time,  his  privilege.  He  had  such  enjoyment, 
such  delight  in  the  unmolested  good  of  the  time, 
that  it  became  the  chief  blessing  of  his  day  ;  and 
all  its  works  were  done  under  the  sacred  impulse, 
and  the  smoothed  flow  and  buoyant  spring  of  the 
sense  of  God  there  received.  It  was  in  fact  his 
luxury ;  just  that  luxury  which  every  humblest,  poor- 
est saint  could  have  as  well  as  he  ;  and  in  which 
all  the  gifts  and  orders  of  life  are  how  nearly  equal- 
ized. 

Now  there  may  be  some  of  you  that  have  never  had 
so  much  as  a  question  about  these  routine  observances 
in  duty.  What  is  there  for  you  in  them,  when,  as  re- 
spects the  matter  of  religion,  you  have  never  come 
into  that  kind  of  duty  at  all  %  "What  can  you  do  in 
religion,  having  no  heart  to  it,  but  wait  till  the  heart 
is  given  ?  What  are  your  sacrifices,  till  then,  but  an 
abomination?  Of  course  your  prayers  or  sacrifices 
are  an  abomination,  when  they  are  offered  in  a  wicked 
and  abominable  spirit.  But  not  so  if  they  are  offered 
in  a  real  desire  to  get  help  in  clearing  the  bad  spirit, 
and  beginning  a  right  life.  Considering  then  calmly 
the  fact,  that  religion  is  the  first  errand  of  existence, 
and  the  chief  import  of  your  life-charge  itself,  give 
yourself  to  it  in  set  times  of  thought  and  spiritual  en- 
deavor. No  matter  what  your  present  feeling  may 
be,  or  how  great  your  want  of  feeling  ;  no  matter 
how  indifferent  you  may  be,  or  how  dark  as  regards 
all  christian  subjects.  Set  your  times  of  prayer  not 
for  a  mere  experiment,  but  as  a  fixed  appointment 


INDISPENSABLE.  327 

never  to  be  discontinued.  Go  to  it  in  the  cold  to  get 
heat.  Go  to  it  in  the  dark  to  wait  and  watch  for 
the  light.  Go  to  it  without  inclination,  pleading  the 
promise  of  God's  Spirit  to  give  you  inclination. 
All  this  in  the  rational  conviction  that,  as  religion 
is  your  greatest  practical  concern,  God  will  be  wait- 
ing, on  his  part,  to  open  the  gate  for  you  ;  to  greet, 
accept  and  bid  you  everlasting  welcome.  Now, 
doing  this,  I  can  not  tell  you  precisely  in  what 
manner  God  will  deal  with  you.  I  can  only  prom- 
ise that,  as  certainly  as  your  times  are  kept,  and 
kept  in  a  desire  to  find  him,  he  will  be  found — 
discovered  suddenly,  it  may  be,  in  a  revelation  un- 
expected ;  or  you  may  be  drawn  along  in  a  way 
more  nearly  imperceptible,  till  finally,  you  scarce 
know  when,  the  conclusion  is  upon  you  that  you  are 
somehow  changed.  What  you  began  with  constraint, 
you  somehow  love.  Your  affinities,  feelings,  princi- 
ples, motives,  aspirations,  you  know  not  in  what  way, 
are  certainly  recast,  and  become  wondrously  new. 
Thus  in  one  way  or  another  it  will  be  with  you.  Ac- 
cording to  the  fidelity  of  your  times,  and  the  steadi- 
ness of  your  meaning  in  them,  God  will  give  you, 
and  with  that  you  must  be  content.  There  is  no  per- 
son living,  as  I  verily  believe,  who  will  not  thus, 
after  some  due  time,  be  established  in  the  faith,  and 
filled  with  the  revelation  of  God.  Your  dawn  may 
come  straightway  like  the  sun  flaming  over  the  hori- 
zon as  an  outbursting  power  of  day ;  or  it  may  take 
even  three  or  four  whole  days  to  bring  it ;  but  it  will 


328  ROUTINE   OBSERVANCE,    ETC. 

come.  After  two  clays  he  will  revive  us,  in  the  third 
day  he  will  raise  us  up,  and  we  shall  live  in  his 
sight.  We  shall  as  certainly  know  as  we  follow  on 
to  know  the  Lord,  for  his  going  forth  is  prepared  as 
the  morning. 


XVII. 

OUR  ADVANTAGE  IN   BEING  FINITE, 


"Thou  madest  him  a  little  lower  than  the  angels;  thou  crownedst 
him  with  glory  and  honor,  and  didst  set  him  over  the  works  of  thy 
hands." — Hub.  2  :   7. 

Because  we  are  created  and  finite,  the  conclusion 
is  sprung  at  once,  by  many,  that  we  are  insignificant. 
And  sometimes  they  will  even  make  a  merit  of  it, 
counting  it  a  way  of  doing  honor  to  God,  that  we 
draw  as  dejected  and  sorry  a  figure  as  possible  of  our- 
selves. Even  as  we  see  in  Job's  friend  Eliphaz,  one 
of  those  old-time  sophists  of  the  East,  whose  trick  it 
is  always  to  be  laying,  first,  their  slant  of  contempt  on 
whatever  is  finite,  and  then  spreading  themselves  out 
in  high  airs  on  the  infinite,  as  if  it  were  altogether  in 
their  province !  "  Behold  he  put  no  trust  in  his  serv- 
ants, and  his  angels  he  charged  with  folly.  As  to 
them  that  dwell  in  houses  of  clay,  whose  foundation  is 
in  the  dust — they  are  crushed  before  the  moth."  I  read 
from  Umbreit's  version.  But  the  sophist  keeps  on  with 
his  prating  as  he  began.  He  not  only  puts  down  the 
poor  mortal  under  such  frailty  that  even  the  moth  will 
trample  him,  but  goes  on  to  add  that  he  perishes  with- 
28*  (329) 


330  OUR   ADVANTAGE 

out  any  regarding  it,— lives  in  but  the  empty  show  of 
excellency,  and  dies  without  wisdom.  I  do  not  call 
the  citing  of  this  libel  on  God's  work  in  man,  quoting 
Scripture.  I  only  do  it,  that  I  may  controvert 
and  refute  the  libel.  Putting  with  it  also  what  our 
new-time  Eliphazes  add,  in  what  they  conceive  to  be 
their  more  sovereign  philosophy;  showing  that  our 
finite  consciousness  is  only  a  pleasant  conceit  of  being 
something  we  are  not;  that  what  we  think  our  liberty 
is  only  fate;  our  sin  a  thing  of  circumstance  in  which 
we  foolishly  make  ourselves  guilty ;  our  immortality  a 
merely  fond  illusion.  So  we  get  a  last  shove  towards 
nothingness,  and  in  that  we  go  down,  sometimes  quite 
out  of  sight  of  ourselves;  saying,  how  often,— "No 
matter,  let  God,  or  fate  take  care  of  us ;  for  we  are 
really  too  nearly  nothing,  to  be  of  any  great  conse- 
quence, whether  to  ourselves  or  to  each  other."  Atro- 
phy, complete  moral  atrophy,  is  the  certain  result  of 
this  most  unnecessary  and  unjust  self-depreciation; 
and  there  can  be  no  other. 

In  the  passage  from  which  I  speak,  I  begin  at  quite 
another  point,  where  God's  well  authorized  teacher 
shows  Him  magnifying  his  creature — putting  even 
glory  and  honor  upon  him,  enduing  him  with  prerog- 
ative, setting  him  in  dominion.  He  is  not  proposing 
to  magnify  God  by  crushing  down  his  creature,  but  by 
raising  him  up,  rather,  into  power  and  majesty. 
When  I  read  this  passage  of  Scripture,  indeed,  I  am 
not  quite  sure  that  the  Uncreated  being  is  more  privi- 
leged than  the  created ;  and  it  is  this  grand  positivity 


IN   BEING    FINITE.  331 

of  privilege  that  I  now  undertake  to  show.  Dis- 
tinguishing between  the  two  great  conditions  or  kinds 
of  being,  the  Uncreated  and  the  created,  the  Infinite 
and  the  finite,  the  Supreme  and  the  subject,  I  propose, 
using  these  terms  interchangeably ,— for  they  mean,  as 
far  as  we  are  now  concerned,  the  same  thing, — to  give 
a  merely  calm,  just  statement  of  the  created,  the  finite, 
the  subject,  which  will  show  them  in  place,  as  the  ge- 
ologist might  say,  and  will  practically  magnify  their 
significance  as  no  most  flaming  and  declamatory  exhi- 
bition possibly  can. 

It  is  a  very  conclusive  and  short  argument  that  I 
put  at  the  head  in  this  discussion  ;  viz.,  that  all  the  wis- 
dom and  character  there  may  be  in  the  Uncreated,  will 
of  course  be  entered  somehow  into  the  advancement 
of  the  created.  So  that  whoever  depreciates  his  work, 
depreciates  him.  Of  course  he  has  not  put  his  infinite 
quantities  into  every  or  an}7  finite  creature,  but  all  the 
wisdom  he  has,  all  the  goodness,  all  the  privilege  of 
nature  that  he  has  in  himself,  is  just  so  far  entered 
into  his  creature  as  it  can  be.  It  is  not  so  with  other 
kinds  of  creatures,  such  as  animals  and  stones,  for 
they  are  not  reciprocal  natures.  But  the  moral  nature 
of  man  is  reciprocal,  and  is,  by  supposition,  open  as 
by  right,  to  all  there  is  of  good  in  God  that  can  be 
communicated,  or  received.  In  this  simple  fact,  of 
answering  property  and  perpetual  participation,  what 
a  conception  have  we  of  the  privilege  of  every 'cre- 
ated moral  being,  as  related  to  the  Uncreated  !     What 


332  OUR   ADVANTAGE 

is  it  thus  for  any  created  mind  to  be,  but  glory,  and 
honor,  and  dominion  over  God's  works  ? 

But  we  have  a  specification  to  make,  in  which  we 
may  begin  to  see,  more  distinctly,  what  advantage  we 
have  in  being  finite,  or  created.  I  begin  with  the  fact 
that  we  have  a  whole  class  of  virtues  permitted  us 
which  are  interesting  and  beautiful  in  themselves,  and 
yet  no  wise  pertinent  to  God.  Temperance,  for  ex- 
ample, is  one ;  a  self-containing,  manly  habit,  as 
respects  the  uses  both  of  mind  and  body,  that  has  been 
abundantly  admired  and  praised  by  the  ripest  teachers 
of  philosophy.  Contentment,  in  like  manner,  is  a  vir- 
tue that  has  no  place  with  God,  because  he  has  no 
uneasy,  malcontent  properties  in  his  nature  that  re- 
quire any  such  kind  of  self-regimen  to  compose  and 
sweeten  them.  Candor  is  a  lovely  and  just  character, 
that  is  able  to  hold  the  reins  of  judgment  impartially, 
against  the  sway  of  prejudice  and  passion.  Having 
ho  such  liabilities,  God  wants  no  such  virtue.  Cour- 
age— we  make  heroes  of  courage ;  but  as  God  has 
nothing  to  fear,  no  perils  to  subdue,  he  is  eternally  out 
of  range,  as  regards  this  noble  virtue.  Gratitude,  most 
honorable  to  show,  and  a  real  beatitude  to  feel,  is  no 
privilege  of  the  supreme,  or  of  any  but  a  subject  na- 
ture. So  of  prudence,  fortitude,  economy,  and  a  great 
many  other  like  qualities ;  all  humble  flowers,  yet 
even  such  as  God  will  look  upon  with  delight,  though 
not  in  dignity  for  Him — crocuses,  blooming  in  the 
low  chill  air  of  human  life,  anemones,  violets,  arbu- 
tuses, of  virtue,  pricking  out  close  down  in  the  margin, 


IN   BEING   FINITE.  333 

as  it  were,  of  the  snows ;  fair  as  they  know  how  to  be, 
fragrant  as  they  can  be,  tokens,  in  that  manner,  of  our 
finite  privilege. 

Next,  as  being  creatures  and  finite  we  are  allowed  to 
grow,  as  the  Supreme  Infinite  can  not.  He  encoun- 
ters no  new  ideas,  acquires  nothing  which  he  had  not 
before,  beholds  what  he  beheld,  and  is  ever  the  same 
that  he  was.  We,  as  being  finite,  have  our  best  enjoy- 
ment in  the  sense  of  progress.  We  advance  in 
thought,  we  accumulate  force,  we  run  with  larger  vol- 
ume and  momentum,  as  rivers  fed  by  new  and  larger 
tributaries  on  their  way  to  the  sea.  It  is  very  difficult 
for  us  to  conceive  the  Infinite  being  as  existing  in  a 
way  of  eternally  stationary  completeness,  Avithout  as- 
sociating some  concern  lest  he  be  staled  in  the  exactly 
full -orbed  perfectness  of  his  knowledge  and  power. 
Thus  the  scholar,  the  clerk,  the  apprentice,  who  should 
have  it  forced  upon  him,  that  he  is  going  never  to  take 
a  new  idea,  never  to  acquire  a  more  ready  dexterity 
in  his  employment,  never  to  advance  upon  himself, 
would  be  utterly  crushed  by  the  discovery.  Of  course 
it  is  in  point  to  remember  that  the  Eternal  Wisdom 
wants  no  new  ideas,  because  he  has  all  that  can  ever 
be  true  already  gathered  in  ;  fresher  too  in  their  old- 
ness,  than  any  that  are  newly  arrived  and  not  yet  half 
apprehended  can  be.  He  wants  no  growth,  because 
he  is  full-grown  already,  and  like  truth  itself,  he  never 
can  be  staled  in  ripeness  because  he  is  in  beauty  ever- 
lastingly fresh-born.  But  since  any  such  mental  stock 
is  impossible  for  us,  what  is  it  but  our  noble  privi- 


334  OUR   ADVANTAGE 

lege,  to  advance  upon  ourselves,  in  a  more  phenomenal 
and  transitional  way  ? 

Again,  it  is  a  very  great  advantage  of  our  subject 
and  created  state,  that  it  has  a  perfectly  unknown  fu- 
ture. I  know  it  is  not  so  regarded.  It  even  chokes 
our  patience,  that  we  can  not  tear  away  this  veil,  or 
fly  over  this  mountain.  We  worry  ourselves  in  throes 
of  curiosity  and  auguries  of  would-be  divination,  and 
break  into  bitter  complaints,  that  we  can  not  know  what 
shall  be  on  the  morrow.  But  we  must  be  infinite,  by 
definition,  to  have  all  the  future  commanded  by  our 
knowledge,  and  that  by  supposition  we  can  not  be. 
Most  happy  for  us  too,  it  is.  For  if  we  could  know 
things  future  by  direct  inspection,  as  God  does,  it 
would  rob  us  of  a  great  part  of  the  satisfactions  of  our 
life,  and  reduce  us  to  a  condition  of  dullness  and  dry- 
ness quite  insufferable.  Now,  as  we  have  it,  every 
moment  is  rolling  up  into  knowledge  out  of  the  un- 
known, and  to  live  is  to  discover.  We  are  greater 
discoverers  in  fact  than  Columbus,  discovering,  each 
man,  his  own  new  world  every  day.  The  very  zest 
of  life  as  things  are  now  is  enterprise ;  that  going  upon 
a  venture,  which  dares  the  unknown,  to  wrest  victories 
from  it.  Hope  is  now  the  consummate  flower  of  life ; 
whereas  if  we  had  the  future  mapped  distinctly  out  to 
our  knowledge,  we  could  hope  for  nothing.  Now 
among  all  the  felicities  of  God,  there  is  to  him  no 
place  for  hope.  It  is  the  uncertainty  also  of  life,  as  a 
future  unknown,  that  constitutes  the  ever-pressing 
argument  for  faith,  shoving  us  out  upon  the  help  that 


IN   BEING   FINITE.  335 

is  invisible,  and  the  good  that  is  unseen — which  faith- 
power  is  the  grand  sixth  sense  of  life,  outreaching  all 
the  other  senses,  and  grasping  worlds  of  reality  that 
lie  beyond  their  compass  altogether.  The  Infinite  be- 
ing doubtless  dwells  in  other  felicities  that  are  proper 
to  his  all-knowing  state ;  but  any  such  kind  of  knowl- 
edge of  the  future  would  plainly  enough  be  a  suffoca- 
ting knowledge  to  us. 

Again,  we  have  relations  to  equals,  and  vast  oppor- 
tunities of  happiness  proper  to  such  relations,  which 
of  course  the  Infinite  beino;  has  not,  because  it  is  im- 
possible  for  him  to  have  equals.  How  much  this 
means  we  can  easily  discover,  if  we  note  what  kind  of 
unsociety  we  suffer  when  we  have  about  us  only  per- 
sons very  unequal — too  far  above  us,  or  too  far  below. 
These  great  inequalities  it  is  that  furnish  picturesque 
opportunities  of  favor  bestowed  or  benefit  received, 
and  so  impart  a  high-toned  relish  to  life ;  and  yet  our 
staple  enjoyments  come,  for  the  most  part,  from  such 
as  are  more  nearly  our  equals,  and  there  is  a  peculiar 
and  most  welcome  flavor  in  such.  The  acts  we  per- 
form and  the  sentiments  we  cherish  towards  such,  are 
what  they  perform  and  cherish  towards  us.  No  im- 
mensely superior  being  among  ourselves  could  give  us 
any  such  common-level  tributes  of  respect  or  approba- 
tion ;  and  we  could  not  easily  aspire  to  render  such  to 
him.  We  are  commonly  jealous,  too,  of  what  we  im- 
agine to  be  patronizing  airs.  Or  perhaps  these  high 
ones  flatter  us,  to  win  our  returning  suffrages  of  ap- 
plause.    It  is  not  as  when  old  comrades  in  school,  in 


336  OUR    ADVANTAGE 

suffering  and  labor,  in  shipwreck  and  battle,  come  to 
us  in  their  unaffected,  unexaggerated  offices  of  friend- 
ship. 0.1  this  plane  of  mortal  equality,  therefore,  we 
have  a  whole  set  of  principles,  virtues,  and  felicities, 
that  belong  to  our  finite  privilege,  in  a  way  that  is 
exclusive ;  duties  and  deeds  of  courtesy,  society,  vol- 
untary differences,  hospitable  customs,  modes,  man- 
ners, entertainments,  generosities  and  ways  of  free- 
dom, that  have  no  fear  of  cringing,  or  desire  of  being 
cringed  to,  no  thought  of  trespassing,  or  being  tres- 
passed on — all  which  belong  to  equals  only,  and  be- 
come a  virtue  in  them  that  is  strictly  their  own. 
Thus  it  is  the  privilege  of  men,  and  a  very  great  priv- 
ilege, to  know  what  equals  think  of  them.  God  has 
no  such  privilege.  It  is  even  impossible  for  him  to 
value  what  any  but  creatures  vastly  inferior,  and  com- 
paratively low,  can  think  of  him,  for  there  are  no  other. 
We  have  a  certain  value  of  some  men's  opinion,  but 
God  never  valued  the  opinion  of  any  body,  unless  it 
were  to  somehow  mend  it  and  make  it  more  adequate. 
He  may  enjoy  us  certainly,  and  he  does,  but  only  as 
enjoying  weakness  to  make  it  strong,  or  such  as  grope 
that  he  may  give  them  light — much  as  wre  value  the 
tottling  of  a  child  when  we  help  it  to  walk. 

Meantime  it  is  another  privilege  related  to  this  of 
having  equals,  that  our  finite  range  permits  us  to  have 
superiors,  and  especially  to  have  and  enjoy  one  great 
superior,  the  Universal  and  Supreme  Himself.  Where- 
as he,  whatever  joy  beside  is  allowed  him,  can  never 
know  what  it  is  to  look  up  to,  rest  in,  or  enjoy,  any 


IN    BEING    FINITE.  337 

being  greater  than  himself.  As  being  infinite,  he  is 
shut  up  to  the  solitude  of  his  own  incomparable  and 
immeasurably  transcendent  greatness.  Therefore, 
some  have  been  so  much  concerned  for  his  felicity,  as 
to  be  set  on  contriving  how  he  gets  society  in  the  ever- 
lasting Three ;  supposing  that  to  be  even  the  neces- 
sary condition  of  his  comfortable  bestowment.  But  a 
trinity  not  viciously  conceived  makes  God  numerally 
one,  not  any  such  plurality,  or  congress  in  society. 
And  even  if  it  made  him  three  co-equal  Gods,  it 
would  not  give  him  a  superior.  In  that  respect  we 
still  have  our  advantage.  We  are  set  thus  everlast- 
ingly, in  a  most  dear  relation  to  one,  who  can  be,  and 
is,  our  Infinite  Friend.  His  all-seeing  eye  keeps 
watch.  His  all-hearing  ear  listens.  His  all-govern- 
ing power  is  regnant  in  us  and  about  us.  In  him  we 
have  a  grandly  fortified  state.  We  dwell  among  mag- 
nitudes and  in  masses  that  are  centered  in  his  will, 
as  secure  from  injury  by  them,  as  if  we  had  infinite 
power  and  wisdom  in  ourselves  to  manage  them. 
We  live,  as  it  were,  in  dialogue  with  infinite  great- 
ness. Small  in  ourselves,  we  have  contemplations, 
and  contacts  of  it,  that  are  putting  us  always  in  the 
sense  of  majesty  and  strength  everlasting,  and  giving 
us  an  experience  above  our  own  measures.  We  are 
complemented,  infinited,  so  to  speak,  in  our  Great  Su- 
perior. The  having  such  a  superior  is,  in  fact,  our 
principal  significance.  Better  not  to  have  eyes  and 
never  to  see  the  sun,  than  not  to  know  this  blessed 
relationality  with  him.  O  what  beauty,  what  ever- 
29 


338  OUR   ADVANTAGE 

during  freshness,  what  satisfying  fullness,  what  depth 
and  height  of  measure,  does  it  give  to  our  otherwise 
little  affairs  !  Our  sceneries  have  thus  an  overtowering 
summit,  but  the  lowly  valleys  and  green  dales  we  live 
in  are  not  the  less  gladdened  by  warmth,  that  they 
are  sheltered  by  heights  that  look  solitary  and  cold. 
It  would  of  course  be  freezing  cold  to  any  one  of  us, 
to  be  shot  up,  in  our  littleness,  into  such  solitudes  of 
preeminence.  But  we  must  not  allow  the  impres- 
sion, that  infinite  being  is  of  course  unprivileged  by 
reason  of  its  own  magnitudes ;  for  God  is  not  any  so 
cold  mountain  peak  of  greatness  in  the  world  as  we 
may  think,  but  a  sun  of  goodness  rather,  above  all 
worlds,  having  heat  in  himself  for  his  own  everlasting 
comfort  and  ours  besides.  Only  he  can  never  have 
the  peculiar  kind  of  joy  in  us  or  any  other,  that  we 
have  in  him ;  because  there  is  and  can  be  no  other 
high  enough  to  command  his  admiration,  or  support 
his  homage  and  trust. 

At  this  point,  again,  we  naturally  pass  to  a  notice 
of  the  great  and  even  immeasurable  advantage  we 
have  in  being  such  as  may  fitly  have  our  opportunity 
in  worship.  Here  we  go  beyond  the  mere  sense,  or 
certified  consciousness,  of  relationality  just  spoken  of. 
We  pass  into  act,  and  set  ourselves  adoringly  before 
the  object  of  worship.  We  regard,  too,  not  so  much 
his  preeminent  order  and  the  natural  greatness  of  his 
person,  but  we  are  occupied  more  with  his  holiness, 
and  the  beauty  and  majesty  of  his  moral  greatness. 
To  worship  is  to  find  a  joy  in  prostration    before  a 


IN    BEING    FINITE.  339 

being  infinitely  pure  and  perfect.  It  is  to  say  and  to 
sing  "  hallowed  be  thy  name,"  and  be  hallowed  by  it 
ourselves.  Brought  up,  as  we  are,  under  the  blue 
heaven,  symbolizing  always  the  purity  of  God,  and 
letting  fall  its  image  to  waken  correspondence  in  our1 
feeling,  we  are  trained,  so  to  speak,  for  worship.  I 
believe  it  is  not  commonly  thought  of,  as  being  in  it- 
self a  privilege  to  worship,  but  it  is  considered  to  be 
only  a  good  much  commended,  because  it  comes  along 
as  a  prescribed  part  of  our  duty  in  religion.  On  the 
contrary,  as  we  are  constituted,  there  is  nothing  to  be 
thought  of,  or  desired,  or  done,  out  of  the  most  licen- 
tious liberty  of  choice,  at  all  comparable  to  the  exer- 
cise permitted  and  provided  for,  of  worship  itself.  In 
it  we  rise  highest,  think  the  noblest  things,  burn  with 
the  divinest  fires  our  nature  can  support.  Even  as  we 
receive  the  highest,  dearest  sentiments  that  visit  our 
eyes,  in  the  ranges  of  nature,  making  long  journeys, 
and  putting  ourselves  to  undertakings  most  exhausting 
and  perilous,  just  to  get  the  privilege  of  wonder,  and 
have  the  sense  of  beauty  and  sublime  admiration 
stirred  in  our  feeling.  The  joy  we  obtain  thus  is  a 
kind  of  natural  worship,  paid  to  sceneries  and  sounds, 
to  waterfalls  and  heaven -piercing  mountains,  and 
storms  of  the  land,  and  storms  of  the  sea,  to  wrath, 
and  thunder,  and  power,  and  color,  and  beauty.  In 
all  which  we  discover,  in  a  lower  key  and  a  compara- 
tively feeble  example,  what  joy  we  are  made  for,  in 
having  our  finite  mind  exalted  by  the  contemplations, 
and  kindled  by  the  glow  of  worship.     And  it  is  a  joy 


8-10  OUR   ADVANTAGE 

of  the  finite  and  created  only.  The  Infinite  being  has 
of  course  no  right  or  possibility  of  worship  ;  for  there 
is  nothing  above  him  to  move  his  homages,  or  set  him 
in  the  beatitude  of  praise.  The  glorious  Amen,  the 
awful  joy  of  worship,  is  permitted  creature  minds 
alone. 

Not  to  multiply  points  of  advantage  in  the  finite, 
without  limit,  there  is  yet  one  other  which  is  not 
strictly  incidental,  it  may  be,  or  necessary  to,  the  rela- 
tion of  infinite  and  finite  being,  like  the  points  already 
named,  but  is  even  instituted  or  appointed  by  God's 
will  and  counsel.  It  is  referred  to  by  the  apostle  him- 
self, wonderingly  and  with  praise,  when  he  names  the 
very  impressive  fact  that  our  Creator  has  set  us  over 
the  works  of  his  hands.  For  it  is  most  remarkable 
that  finite  creatures  have  it  given  them,  on  so  vast  a 
scale,  to  come  in  after  him  and  put  their  finishes  on 
his  works.  Thus  he  becomes  Creator  and  we  sub-crea- 
tors ;  Saviour,  we  sub-saviours.  In  almost  every  thing, 
finite  being  is  set  of  course  in  a  subaltern  office,  where 
nevertheless  it  is  called  to  fulfill  or  complete  what  the 
infinite  has  begun.     Thus  God  creates  in  the  rough 


far;> 


land,  sea,  rivers,  mountains,  and  wild  forests.  So  fa 
only  does  he  make  scenery,  but  he  never  creates  a 
proper  landscape.  The  rich  fields,  and  gardens,  and 
green  meadows  and  lawns,  the  open  vistas  of  orna- 
ment, the  road-ways,  bridges,  cottages  and  cleanl 
dressed  shores  of  water — all  that  constitutes  the  speci 
beauty  of  the  world,  is  something  added,  as  finish, 
after  the  world  is  made ;  even  as  our  first  father  w 


IN   BEING   FINITE.  341 

set  to  dress  and  keep  the  garden,  and  make  a  finer  and 
more  properly  artistic  scene  of  it.  We  look  abroad 
over  almost  any  landscape,  and  every  thing  we  see, 
except  the  mere  skeleton  form,  is  from  the  finite  crea- 
tors who  have  taken  up  the  rough  work  that  was  given 
them,  to  put  their  final  touch  upon  it.  So  of  all 
fruits,  grains,  animals  of  use ;  taken  as  being  made, 
they  were  only  wild,  half-begotten,  misbegotten  crea- 
tures— apples  that  were  crabs,  wheat  of  a  bitter  wild- 
rice-Jooking  kernel,  horses  of  the  mustang  type,  and 
size.  Not  even  the  flowers,  lurking  in  the  woods, 
could  show  much  beauty  till  they  were  transplanted 
and  taught  what  shape  they  might  take  in  their  kind, 
and  into  what  colors  they  might  blush.  So  again  of 
government,  the  infinite  of  it  is  represented  far  back, 
in  moral  natures,  simply  configured  to  right,  and  then 
it  is  their  finite  action  that  is  to  build  up  codes  of 
manners,  duties,  and  rights ;  framing  also  states,  and 
laws,  and  constitutions,  and  setting  all  the  ranges  of 
family  care  at  work,  as  so  many  mills  of  discipline,  to 
mold  and  model  the  manhood,  that  shall  be,  in  the 
childhood  that  is.  In  like  manner,  mind,  in  its  rough 
original,  is  but  a  ray  of  possibility  from  the  infinite, 
which  can  never  be  intelligence,  in  fact,  till  it  strug- 
gles forth  itself,  or  is  brought  forth  by  some  educating 
help  from  its  kind.  Here  too  laws  are  from  the  infi- 
nite, science  from  the  finite — coming  out  after  a  long 
time,  but  always  expected  to  come.  So  of  all  high 
culture,  in  thought  and  art,  and  language.  What  a 
magnificent  temple  is  built  in  every  great  language. 
29* 


342  OUR   ADVANTAGE 

Passing,  last  of  all,  to  religion,  or  the  christian  form 
of  it,  what  do  we  see,  but  that  when  it  is  done  as  to 
the  making,  it  is  yet  to  be  finished  by  the  propagation. 
It  does  not  even  propose  the  conversion  of  the  world, 
save  by  men  themselves.  It  must  have  its  ministries 
in  them ;  it  must  be  reincarnated  in  the  finite  genera- 
tions, age  upon  age,  and  theirs  it  must  be,  to  live  its 
divine  beauty  into  the  world,  to  preach,  and  sow,  and 
cultivate,  and  suffer,  if  need  be,  till  they  have  leav- 
ened all  sin,  by  the  love  that  is  in  them.  And  so  it 
comes  to  pass  universally,  with  how  great  honor,  I 
might  almost  say  deference,  shown  to  creatures  in  the 
finite,  that  God,  who  is  the  infinite  beauty  Himself, 
wants  to  see  it  bloom  in  his  children.  Perhaps  it 
could  not  be  distinctly  apprehended  till  they  had  given 
it  their  touch  themselves. 

But  if  there  be  so  many  advantages  in  our  subject 
nature,  and  finite  order  of  being,  an  objection  will 
most  likely  be  interposed,  asking  what  of  sin,  or  moral 
evil,  and  the  liability  under  which  it  appears  %  Is  it 
not  the  natural  and  all  but  necessary  incident  of  our 
limited  and  progressive  endowments.  I  have  no  time 
or  space  here  to  discuss  so  large  a  subject.  It  is  in 
this  fact  referred  to,  as  we  can  not  but  see,  that  our 
existence  becomes  a  tragic  affair,  and  are  we  not 
aware  that  all  greatest  movements,  and  highest  exalta- 
tions, whether  of  action,  or  sentiment,  are  closest 
bound  up  with  tragedy ;  yielding,  in  this  manner,  the 
tenderest  and  most  thrilling  delights.  Even  its  woes 
are  delights.     Shall  we  not  also  come  up  out  of  our 


IN    BEING    FINITE.  343 

shame  and  sorrow,  knowing  good  by  the  fiery  scorch 
of  evil,  and  have  it  better  good  because  of  evil  ? 
Have  we  no  grand  privilege,  in  this  bitter  and  deep 
story  ?  Of  course  we  are  not  put  into  it  as  privilege, 
for,  in  some  principal  sense  we  put  ourselves  into  it ; 
but  the  very  unmaking  of  it — what  can  it  do  but  make 
us  gods,  climbing  up  out  of  it  into  God's  plane,  as  not 
even  the  lying  serpent  imagined.  One  thing,  at  least, 
is  clear,  that  our  eternal  Word  can  never  know,  as  he 
has  given  us  to  know,  what  it  is  in  so  great  mortal 
shame  and  hopelessness,  to  be  visited  by  a  superior  na- 
ture's love,  sorrowing  tenderly  about  him,  and  dying  in- 
to him,  as  it  were,  to  rally  him  and  win  him  back  to  life. 
That  is  a  felicity  most  grand  which  never  can  be  his  ! 

It  will  probably  occur  to  some  of  you,  in  the  tracing 
of  these  illustrations  and  discovering  in  them  what 
dear  privilege  there  may  be,  in  our  subject  form 
of  being,  that  possibly  we  are  to  apprehend  some  se- 
cret reason  herein  of  the  incarnation,  which  is  not 
often  adverted  to  or  conceived.  Thus  over  and  above 
what  benefits  of  grace  and  salvation  were  proposed,  it 
is  not  absurd  to  imagine  some  attractiveness  felt  in 
our  subject  conditions  themselves.  Just  as  some  great 
hero,  or  apostle,  now  and  then,  will  love  in  mere  ten- 
derness to  become  a  little  child  among  children,  and 
have  his  part  and  place  with  them  as  an  equal.  Noth- 
ing is  more  evident  from  Christ's  own  word  and  way, 
than  that  he  had  great  satisfaction  in  it.  Did  he  not 
come  for  the  joy  set  before  him — set  before  him,  not 


314  OUR   ADVANTAGE 

as  in  prospect,  but  as  a  table  is  set  for  a  guest  ?  Was 
it  not  confessedly  his  meat  and  drink,  to  be  subject 
thus  under  the  Father?  Was  he  not  tasting  finite 
privilege  in  it  ?  Was  he  not  acting  himself  into  the 
created,  and  harvesting  in  it  the  fruits  of  a  sweet  hu- 
man obedience  ?  In  what  deep  welcome  also  did  he  re- 
ceive the  witness — "  This  is  my  beloved  son  in  whom  I 
am  well  pleased  ;"  remembering  just  there,  we  may  sup- 
pose, how  a  good,  right  man  of  the  old  time  felt,  when 
he  had  "  the  testimony  that  he  pleased  God."  Isot  that 
any  such  humanized  privilege  was  needful  to  him,  but 
that  he  might  magnify  our  finite  lot,  by  letting  the  joy 
of  it  beam  out  through  his  sorrow,  and  so  might  give 
us  a  sufficiently  dear,  and  really  divine,  opinion  of  it. 
And  so  praying  that  we  might  have  his  joy  fulfilled 
in  us,  what  did  he  mean,  but  that  what  he  found  him- 
self, in  our  finite  molds  of  good,  we  also  might  find  ? 
What  honor  therefore  did  he  put  on  our  human  form 
of  being,  that  he  came  into  it  in  such  ready  humility, 
and  went  through  it  so  gloriously  himself.  And  what 
has  he  done  for  us  more  impressively,  than  by  setting 
his  own  divine  honors  on  all  our  duties  and  trials  and 
even  tears — tempted  as  we  are,  faithful  as  we  should 
be,  joyful  as  we  may  be.  Is  it  then  a  low,  dull  life, 
that  is  given  us  ?  Do  we  long  for  higher  ranges  of 
experience  ?  Do  we  disesteem  the  scale  of  our  engage- 
ments ?  Far  be  it  from  us,  since  our  own  great  Lord 
is  with  us,  and  every  thing  we  look  upon  here  is  hon- 
ored by  his  part  with  us  in  it.  If  we  think  it  trivial 
and  low  to  be  finite,  it  was  not  so  to  him ! 


IN    BEING   FINITE.  345 

At  the  same  time,  while  we  dare  to  magnify  our 
finite  privilege  in  this  manner,  let  it  not  be  with  of- 
fense. If  we  count  it  a  great  thing  to  be  finite,  and 
sometimes  even  a  condition  of  privilege  beyond  what 
belongs  to  the  infinite,  we  only  take  the  honor  and  the 
good  that  are  given  us.  There  is  no  frothiness  or  con- 
ceit, in  this  boasting.  No,  we  magnify  humanity 
overmuch  only  when  we  praise  it  for  a  goodness  it  has 
not,  or  cover  with  vain  words  the  sin  it  has ;  when  we 
make  it  our  gospel  to  have  faith  in  the  dignity  of  hu- 
man nature,  apart  from  any  dignifying  power  of  grace 
and  salvation  ;  when  we  puff  ourselves  up  into  magni- 
tude, by  recounting  possibilities  of  greatness  already 
trampled  and  lost,  or  dress  ourselves  in  shows  and 
draperies  of  virtue  too  thin  to  be  soundly  respected. 
None  of  these  will  at  all  advance  the  proper  estimate 
of  our  quality.  We  rise  highest,  when  we  discover 
what  grand  privilege  belongs  to  our  finite  range  itself, 
and  level  ourselves  up  towards  it  in  the  recovery  of 
what  we  have  lost ;  when  we  settle  into  modesty,  and 
set  ourselves  hopefully  down  to  the  honest  sorrows  of 
repentance ;  when  we  have  it  as  our  just  ambition  to 
be  completely,  perfectly  finite,  filling  out  the  privilege 
of  our  creature-being,  in  exactly  the  measures  God  has 
set  for  it.  Then  too  we  have  gifts  how  many,  and  vir- 
tues how  beautiful,  and  joys  how  blessed,  that  do  not 
some  of  them  belong  even  to  him — having  no  longer 
any  good  to  hope,  or  desire,  in  the  conceit  of  merits 
and  virtues  that  do  not  anywise  belong  to  us.  This  in 
fact  is  the  real  faith  in  man,  though  not  exactly  that 


346  OUR   ADVANTAGE 

of  which  we  hear  so  much.  It  is  that  man  can 
reach  high  enough  in  his  repentances  to  be  so  full  and 
great,  and  be  drawn  relation  ally  so  close  to  the  All- 
Father,  as  to  be  complemented  everlastingly  in  his 
nobler  measures. 

It  ought  also  to  be  added  in  this  connection,  that  our 
very  subject  should  itself  sufficiently  humble  us,  to 
keep  off  any  thought  of  pride  for  our  humanity ;  for 
behold  what  revelation  it  makes  of  the  sin  of  sin, 
showing  us  exactly  what  it  is,  and  wherein  its  crimi- 
nality lies ;  viz.,  in  the  refusal  to  be  lovingly  and  just- 
ly finite.  It  refuses  control,  and  will  not  have  God  to 
reign  over  it.  It  does  not  formally  undertake  to  be 
infinite,  for  it  would  see  the  absurdity  of  that,  but  it 
does  undertake,  in  the  negative  way,  to  be  exactly 
that,  in  refusing  to  accept  the  conditions  of  a  merely 
creature  life.  It  shakes  off  allegiance,  it  is  annoyed 
by  commandments  and  claims  of  authority.  To  be 
controlled  in  duty,  to  be  limited  in  opportunity,  to  be 
restricted  in  liberty,  provokes  irritation.  It  bolts  out 
from  the  finite  state  itself ;  calls  it  a  chain,  tears  its  law 
aside  and  breaks  away.  What  could  be  more  grand, 
or  a  higher  appointment,  than  to  fulfill  just  the  true 
creation-measure  of  God,  and  be  his  created,  such  as 
he  has  meant  and  means  us  to  be?  Ah,  we  do  not  un- 
derstand, my  friends,  what  sin  there  is  in  this  our  sin — 
how  perverse  against  reason  it  is,  how  unjust  to  God, 
who  is  only  contriving  in  all  he  appoints  for  us,  and 
all  he  requires  of  us,  to  bring  us  in,  just  where  we 
shall  be  most  truly  and  completely  ourselves.     With- 


IN   BEING-  FINITE.  347 

out  being  infinite,  and  plainly  enough  there  can  be 
only  one  that  is,  we  can  not  even  conceive  a  state  more 
advantaged,  than  this  in  which  we  are  set.  In  a  great 
many  points  it  has  seeming  advantage  over  even  Su- 
preme Being  itself.  And  yet  this  horrible  riot  of  our 
sin  spurns  all  such  advantage,  refuses  to  be  so  exalted, 
and  lets  us  down,  below  limitation  itself,  into  woes'  of 
self-extirpation,  such  as  we  must  suffer  from  the  waste 
of  our  disorder,  and  the  bitterly  consuming  pangs  of 
our  remorse.  God  forgive  such  madness.  Still  the 
really  sad  bent  of  our  time,  I  grieve  to  say,  is  towards 
the  denial  of  sin ;  we  resolve  it  into  circumstance, 
we  call  it  a  necessity,  we  even  think  it  a  good  mis- 
named. In  one  way  or  another,  we  contrive  to  let 
down  the  guilt  of  it.  I  confess  that  when  I  draw  out 
this  conception  of  advantage  in  our  finite  order,  I  feel 
a  more  unspeakable  horror  of  this  wrong  than  I  know 
how  to  express.  It  throws  me  back  on  those  oft-derid- 
ed words  of  Scripture,  "  the  exceeding  sinfulness  of 
sin."  After  all,  there  is  no  so  faithfully  just  and 
soundly  significant  testimony  as  that. 

There  is  yet  a  particular  point,  on  which  this  subject 
has  been  pressing  from  the  first,  and  I  can  not  fitly 
close  without  demanding  for  it  your  special  attention  ; 
I  speak  now  of  the  immense  and  really  religious  sig- 
nificance it  gives  to  human  education.  It  is  in  this 
fact  of  our  being  finite  progressives,  that  we  are  edu- 
cable ;  capable  that  is  of  being  drawn  out  towards 
the  infinite.  Thus,  in  our  human  scale,  we  think  one 
thought  at  a  time  ;  the  Infinite  thinks  all  thoughts  at 


348  OUR    A  I)  V  ANTARE 

a  time  and  forever.  Our  thought  runs  in  successions, 
making  only  rills  or  rivulets  of  motion  ;  his  broader, 
vaster  measure  holds  all  thoughts  in  static  equilibrium 
together,  as  an  all-comprehending  sea,  towards  which 
our  rivulets  run.  We  begin  at  some  given  date  think- 
ing our  first  thought,  and  going  on  tlras,  in  our  human 
curriculum,  we  try  things,  we  discover,  we  deduce, 
we  memorize ;  all  which  is  finite  operation ;  the  infinite 
has  none  of  it.  But  there  is  attainable  and  is  to  be, 
and  that  is  what  all  education  reaches  after,  a  condi- 
tion of  correspondence,  where  every  subject  thought 
answers  exactly  to  what  is  in  the  Supreme  thought ; 
even  as  David's,  when  he  sang,  "  how  precious  are  thy 
thoughts  unto  me,  O  God,"  or  as  Kepler's,  when  he 
sprang  up  in  the  fresh  discovery  of  his  problem  and 
cried,  "  O  God  I  think  thy  thoughts  after  thee  !"  So  it 
is  that  all  the  truth  we  find  is  truth  to  God,  and  if  we 
find  any  thing  which  is  not  truth  to  God,  it  is  a  lie. 
The  same  is  to  be  said  of  moral  opinions  and  princi- 
ples ;  we  find  no  law  of  righteousness  which  is  not  a 
law  for  all  beings  and  worlds ;  for  the  finite,  and  as 
certainly  too  for  the  infinite.  Science  makes  no  true 
discovery  save  as  it  opens  into  some  law,  which  is 
God's  thought  threading  the  creation.  Learning  or 
literary  culture  approaches  its  true  end  only  as  it  at- 
tains to  ideas,  inspirations,  and  modes  of  skilled  com- 
posure that  belong  to  the  everlasting  proprieties.  All 
true  education  travels  up  thus  towards  the  infinite 
reason,  and  the  culmination  of  it  is  religion ;  other 


IN   BEING   FINITE.  349 

culmination  it  has  none,  and  without  this  it  is  alto- 
gether headless  and  chaotic. 

How  grand  a  thing  then,  in  this  view,  is  education, 
and  withal  if  we  could  see  it,  a  thing  how  nearly 
sacred.  It  is  even  a  kind  of  church  life  in  the  temple 
of  knowledge,  whose  inmost  shrine  contains  the  ark 
of  God ;  and  if  it  does  not  bring  us  finally  to  Him,  the 
cultus  operated  by  our  study  is  but  a  kind  of  nonsense. 
To  make  a  study  of  astronomy,  without  looking  up,  is 
not  a  whit  more  absurd.  All  knowledge  that  refuses 
to  know  the  highest,  and  be  ended  off  in  the  highest, 
is  but  a  sham,  a  living  in  the  bran  that  rejects  the 
flour.  We  encounter  also  just  here  in  this  low  feed 
of  knowledge,  and  also  in-  the  non-improvement  or 
misuse  of  educational  advantages  generally,  the  fur- 
ther, more  appalling  mischief  of  a  stunting  of  our 
souls ;  in  which  we  suffocate  the  very  highest  func- 
tions of  our  intelligent  nature.  Uncreated  being,  as 
we  have  seen,  has  no  attribute  or  possibility  of 
growth.  Insensate  things,  such  as  rocks,,and  seas  of 
water,  do  not  grow.  Animals  and  trees  grow  a  little, 
for  a  little  time,  and  come  to  their  limit.  But  the 
grandest  attribute  of  our  created  minds,  one  that  be- 
longs to  no  other  finite  creature  whatever,  is  that  they 
have  the  gift  of  a  growth  everlasting.  A  fact  which 
makes  it  only  the  more  dreadfully  appalling,  that  they 
can  so  easily  and  also  fatally  shorten  back  this  capac- 
ity, and  give  it  a  forever  stunted  force ;  for  no  really 
stunted  creature,  whether  animal  or  plant  or  mind, 
after  a  certain  early  period,  which  may  be  called  its 
30 


350  OUR   ADVANTAGE 

growing  day,  is  over,  is  ever  set  back  to  its  full  grow- 
ing rate  again.  Even  the  faithful  scholar  gets  through 
growing  size  and  staple  force  in  a  very  few  years,  and, 
after  that,  only  gathers  in  further  contents  without 
much  enlargement  of  volume.  And  what  an  argu- 
ment have  we  here  for  the  faithful  improvement  of  all 
opportunities  ;  always  and  every  where  too  for  a  sound 
self-discipline  ;  for  a  nobly  pure  life  ;  for  a  godly  habit, 
and  a  vision  purified  and  cleared  by  the  grace  of  relig- 
ion. For  these  helps  of  education  rightly  improved, 
propose  as  we  have  seen  a  larger  man,  and  to  give  him 
everlastingly  enlarged  consequence  to  himself;  while 
the  poor  idler,  the  light-headed  trifler,  who  rejects  ap- 
plication, gadding  always  after  pleasures  and  dissipa- 
tions, goes  forward  into  his  future  to  be  as  insignificant 
there  as  here,  as  incapable  of  thought,  as  insipid  and 
trivial  as  any  growing  creature  that  has  lost  its  day, 
and  stopped  short  in  making  volume,  inevitably  must 
be.  To  break  out  there,  after  his  education-day  is 
over,  and  recover  his  lost  volume,  is  as  little  to  be  ex- 
pected as  that  any  dwarf  will  grow  up  into  a  hero. 
O  my  friends  there  is  no  question  for  a  finite  creature, 
in  his  schooling- day,  like  this — what  shall  my  nature 
be  worth,  and  what  amount  of  being  shall  I  carry 
with  me,  when  I  enter  the  great  world  before  me  ? 
The  old  trivialities  are  now  gone  by,  the  nonsense 
hours  are  over,  and  now  it  only  remains  to  be  set 
down  in  such  quantity  of  being  and  character,  as  are 
left — and  what  shall  it  be?  His  privilege  was  to  make 
volume  for  himself;  to  be  so  far  a  voluntary  re-creator 


IN  BEING   FINITE.  351 

of  himself;  for  his  education -right  was  to  be  summed 
up,  not  in  his  acquirements,  but  in  his  enlargements. 
Is  he  then  to  be  a  stunted  child  when  his  education- 
day  is  over  ? — that  is  the  question — or  is  he  to  be  a 
Man?  Ah,  my  friends,  that  is  what  you  will  very 
soon  have  decided. 


XVIII. 

THE   OUTSIDE   SAINTS. 


"  Of  a  truth  I  perceive  that  him  is  no  respecter  of  persons.  But 
in  every  nation,  he  that  feareth  him  and  worketh  righteousness  is 
accepted  with  him." — Acts  10:  34-5. 

This  most  grandly  catholic  platform  of  salvation, 
Peter  tlie  apostle  derives  partly  from  his  vision  of  the 
sheet,  and  partly  from  the  outside  brotherhood  which 
his  vision  of  the  sheet  has  prepared  him  to  know  and 
acknowledge  ;  the  brotherhood,  I  mean,  of  Cornelius. 
This  man  is  a  born  Pagan,  a  military  captain  brought 
up  doubtless  in  the  superstitions  of  the  Pantheon,  who 
yet  gives  our  apostle  to  see  plainly  that  he  is,  in  heart, 
a  Christian — a  Christian,  that  is,  outside  of  Christian- 
ity. He  has  been  largely  known  for  a  long  time  as  a 
man  of  prayer,  and  a  thoroughly  devout  character. 
He  is  also  discovered  and  approved  by  God,  before  he 
is  by  Peter ;  for  God  even  sends  an  angel  to  tell  him 
— "  thy  prayers  and  thine  alms  are  come  up  for  a  me- 
morial before  God."  And  as  there  is  always  some- 
thing better  coming,  when  a  man  gets  heaven's  in- 
dorsement in  this  manner,  word  is  given  him  to  send 
to  Joppa  after  Peter,  and  receive  from  him  a  more 
competent  knowledge  of  these  things. 
(352) 


THE   OUTSIDE   SAINTS,  353 

Peter  then  goes  down  to  Caesarea  at  his  call,  and 
becomes  a  guest  with  him  in  his  house  ;  where  ho 
hears  the  whole  story  of  his  faith,  and  learns  appar- 
ently about  as  much  from  him,  as  he  from  Peter — 
brings  out,  or  matures  by  his  Pagan  brother's  help, 
the  great  banner-principle,  from  which  I  am  now  pro- 
posing to  speak. 

In  it  he  corrects  the  superstition  by  which  his  own 
apostleship  had  been  disfigured;  viz.,  the  Jewish  no- 
tion of  an  exclusive  right  in  Israel  to  the  salvation  of 
God;  taking  the  broader  doctrine  of  a  salvation 
everywhere,  and  for  every  body  who  truly  seeks  God's 
light,  or  whom  God's  light  effectually  finds. 

Have  we  no  similar  misconceptions  that  require  to 
be  corrected  %  When  we  assume,  as  we  do,  the  inex- 
cusable guiltiness,  and  the  certain  exclusion  from  Gocl, 
of  all  idolaters,  and  all  the  born  subjects  of  the  false 
religions,  as  in  fact  we  very  often  do,  is  not  Peter's 
vision  of  the  sheet  as  truly  for  us  as  for  him  ?  Neither 
does  it  signify  any  thing,  in  this  matter,  that  we  can 
cite  so  many  denunciations  of  the  Old  Testament,  to 
just  this  effect,  against  the  idolaters  ;  for  these  denun- 
ciations were  not  made  to  the  idolaters — they  never 
heard  of  them — but  to  the  people  of  God,  dwelling  in 
God's  own  light,  to  deter  them  from  lapsing  into  idol- 
atry. So  when  we  cite  the  declaration  of  the  New 
Testament,  that  "  there  is  no  other  name  given  under 
heaven  among  men,  whereby  we  can  be  saved,  but  the 
name  of  Christ,"  do  we  not  fall  into  just  the  same  mis- 
take, of  not  observing,  that  it  is  we  who  have  heard  of 
30* 


354  THE   OUTSIDE   SAINTS. 

Christ  and  known  his  gospel,  that  are  put  under  this 
ban  of  exclusion,  and  not  any  Pagan  people,  who 
have  never  heard  of  him,  or  seen  any  light  but  what 
they  have  in  a  way  more  immediate  ?  Nothing  is 
more  certain  than  that  Peter's  grand  charter-principle 
forbids  any  and  all  such  denouncements.  If,  in  every 
nation,  he  that  feareth  God  and  worketh  righteous- 
ness is  accepted,  how  many  may  there  be  that  never 
heard  of  Christ,  and  scarcely  know  God  more  suffi- 
ciently than  as  the  unknown  God,  who  yet  are  so  far 
right  with  God,  and  so  truly  found  of  God,  as  to  be 
fitly  joined  with  us  in  the  common  hope  of  life.  "VYe 
hope  from  within  the  Bible  and  the  church,  and  they 
from  without,  or  on  the  outside  of  the  same.  They 
compose  the  church  beyond  the  church,  the  unhis- 
toric  discipleship,  sprinkled  over  the  world  in  distant 
ages  and  realms  of  idolatry,  who,  without  a  gospel, 
have  found  a  virtual  gospel  by  their  faith,  and  learned 
to  walk  in  God's  private  light.  That  private  light  is 
truth  unstated  probably  even  by  themselves,  begin- 
ning at  the  feeling,  more  or  less  distinct,  that  there  is 
some  Father  of  all  whose  offspring  they  are,  which 
unknown  Father  loves  them,  and  has  set  them  down 
here,  in  the  grand  trial  of  life,  to  feel  after  him  and, 
if  they  may,  to  find  him.  They  are  such  as  have 
come  into  the  way  of  holiness  by  invisible  God-help, 
which  God-help  way  of  living  is  in  fact  a  living  by 
faith.  Such  examples  may  not  be  numerous,  and  yet 
they  may  be  more  numerous  than  we  think.  If  they 
were  only  such  as  seek  after  God  of  their  own  motion, 


THE    OUTSIDE   SAINTS.  355 

they  might  be  very  few,  but  since  God  is  seeking  after 
them — after  all  men  everywhere — it  should  not  be  in- 
credible that  some  are  found  by  him,  and  folded  in  his 
fold,  which  they  do  not  so  much  as  know.  A  glance 
also  at  certain  great  first  principles,  particularly  the 
three  that  follow,  would  induce  the  hope  that  many 
more  than  we  commonly  suspect,  are  thus  harvested 
for  the  kingdom— 

First.  That  God  loves  all  men  impartially,  and  is  no 
respecter  of  persons  ;  having  the  same  desire  to  be 
loved  by  all,  and  be  known  as  their  Friend. 

Second.  That  he  is  never  afar  off  from  any,  but  is 
close  at  hand,  putting  them  always  on  seeking  after 
him,  in  a  desire  to  have  them  find  him. 

Third.  That  the  Spirit  of  God  is  present,  going 
through  all  minds,  all  over  the  world,  moving  them 
inwardly,  in  a  way  to  kindle  their  yearnings,  and 
draw  their  inclinings  towards  the  inborn  grace,  that 
will  be  in  turn  his  finding  of  them. 

Do  not  imagine  that,  in  stating  these  three  particu- 
lar premises,  I  am  preparing  to  discuss  the  possibility 
of  a  salvation  for  the  outsiders  of  the  gospel.  My  ob- 
ject is  different;  viz.,  to  show  how  God  finds  access  to 
such,  or  by  what  methods  and  means  works  their  piety  and 
engages  them  in  a  felt  devotion  to  his  friendship. 

The  method  I  propose  to  adopt  in  this  inquiry  will 
perhaps  not  be  expected.  I  shall  not  spread  myself 
on  nature  and  Providence,  showing  what  truths  of 
natural  theology  and  practical  discipline  are  set  open 
there  to  all,  and  how  the  outside  men  have,  to  this  ex' 


356  THE    OUTSIDE   SAINTS. 

tent,  precisely  the  same  revelation  that  is  given  to 
those  of  the  inside.  Neither  do  I  propose,  in  looking 
after  such  examples,  to  range  the  general  field  of  pro- 
fane history,  and  draw  out  the  characters,  here  and 
there,  that  appear  to  have  a  tinge  of  goodness  and  re- 
ligious devotion.  Making  the  most  we  can  of  such 
examples,  there  will  yet  be  reason  left  for  a  good  deal 
of  doubt  in  regard  to  them  all.  I  am  going  therefore 
into  the  Bible  itself,  to  find  our  outside  brethren  ;  just 
where  we  so  often  assume  that  we  are  not  of  course  to 
look  for  them.  I  do  it  because  I  shall  have  them  here 
on  a  right  orthodox  footing  of  trust,  and  shall  have 
nothing  in  fact  to  do  but  to  consider  them,  in  their  su- 
pernatural relations,  receiving  their  calls  and  private 
lessons,  and  finding  how  to  know  God  in  the  unwrit- 
ten bible  of  their  own  personal  experience. 

I  begin  with  the  case  of  Enoch.  There  was  no 
written  Scripture  in  his  day,  and  probably  no  church. 
He  appears  to  have  lived  a  kind  of  solitary  life,  which 
is  therefore  called  his  walking  with  God.  He  was 
probably  much  derided  by  the  men  of  his  time,  which 
made  it  the  almost  necessary  comfort  of  his  days  to 
live  "  in  the  testimony  that  he  pleased  God."  And 
this  testimony  was  not  any  audible  witness,  but  the 
witness  of  the  Spirit,  who  came  in  at  the  open  door 
of  nature  set  open  wider  by  his  faith,  till  finally  he 
became  so  permeated  and  leavened  by  the  divine 
affinities,  that  he  went  up,  and  could  not  any  more  be 
found. 

Noah  appears  to  have  been  a  character  not  less  sep- 


THE   OUTSIDE   SAINTS.  357 

arated  from  his  time.  He  was  a  preacher  called  to 
preach  without  a  Bible — a  preacher  of  righteousness, 
even  as  God  taught  him  to  be.  But  there  were  no 
ears  to  hear.  Society  itself  was  a  godless  and  wild 
crew,  given  up  to  all  kinds  of  wrong  and  violence, 
and  lost,  as  it  would  seein,  to  even  the  distinctions  of 
virtue.  It  does  not  appear  that  there  was  any  single 
person,  out  of  his  own  family,  that  knew  any  thing 
about  God,  or  had  any  care  for  religion.  And  the 
oracle  that  found  him,  and  that  he  himself  had  no 
skill  of  his  own  to  find,  improbable  as  it  was,  so 
verified  itself  as  to  put  him  on  building  his  ark,  amid 
the  jeers  of  his  people ;  for  God  by  a  process  strange- 
ly mysterious,  which  he  could  only  trust,  and  could 
not  understand,  was  preparing  him  to  be  the  new- 
stock  father  of  a  new  and  better  age. 

These  two  examples  belong  to  an  outside  life,  when 
there  is  no  church.  We  come  down  next  to  Abra- 
ham, who  stands  at  the  fountain  head,  or  on  the  fron- 
tier line.  In  him  the  church  begins,  and  so  far  he  is 
inside  of  it.  And  yet  he  is  prepared,  in  all  important 
respects,  by  a  previous  outside  training.  He  had  no 
written  revelation,  and  had  seen  no  organized  form  of 
religion.  But  he  came  out  of  the  east,  a  profoundly 
religious  and  nobly  just  character,  so  far  opened  to 
God's  Spirit,  by  his  acquaintance  with  God,  that  he 
could  receive  a  life-call  at  first  hand,  and  take  the 
necessary  guidance  in  that  call.  It  finds  him  at 
Harau,  far  back  in  the  plains  of  Syria,  and  going 
forth  in  it,  he  begins  the  church  history.     Under  what 


858  THE   OUTSIDE   SAINTS. 

kind  of  training,  uniting  what  kind  of  advantages,  he 
had  been  brought  up,  in  the  far  east,  we  do  not  know ; . 
but  it  afterwards  appears,  when  he  sends  his  servant 
back  to  the  east  country,  to  obtain  a  wife  for  his  son, 
that  all  his  relations  there  are,  in  some  sense,  religious 
people.  Thus  when  Abraham's  servant  arrives,  he  is 
welcomed  in  the  name  of  Jehovah,  and  in  some,  at 
least,  of  the  proprieties  of  religion.  Still  there  was 
a  mixture  of  idolatrous  corruption  that  largely  in- 
fected their  Jehovah  worship.  Thus  when  Rachel 
came  away,  a  generation  later,  pursued  by  Laban  to 
recover  the  lost  gods  of  his  religion,  it  appears  that 
she  had  hidden  among  her  effects  certain  little  idols, 
or  amulets,  called  teraphim,  that  were  much  in  vogue, 
at  least,  among  the  women.  And  the  coarseness  of 
Laban,  as  also  the  petty  thieving  of  the  gods  by  his 
daughter,  indicate  the  general  style  and  merit  of  their 
religion.  But  how  grandly  marches  out  Abraham 
into  his  call,  clearing  forever  all  such  trumperies  of 
idolatry,  and  growing  into  such  high  intimacy  with 
God,  that  a  pure  divine  religion  crystallizes,  and  begins 
to  be  organic  in  his  life.  He  knows  nothing  of  piety 
by  definition,  or  intellectual  dissection.  He  has  never 
read  Edwards  on  the  Affections,  and  knows  not  how 
to  square  his  life  by  distinctions  of  motive;  has  no  tests 
of  regeneration,  practices  self-abnegation  artlessly, 
without  analysis,  or  even  asking  what  it  is.  But  God 
has  him  in  training,  and  knows  exactly  by  what  les- 
sons to  bring  him  on,  as  we  see  in  the  story  of  his  sac- 
rifice.    The  problem  here  is  to  teach  what  is  yet  un- 


THK    OUTSIDE   SAINTS.  359 

formed  in  thought,  by  what  is  clone  as  in  act.  The 
two  great  elements  of  obedience  and  trust  are  set  in, 
as  by  a  tragic  practice.  He  is  held  in  deep  maze  all 
the  while  as  he  goes  on,  emerging  at  last  and  brighten- 
ing out  in  the  discovery,  that  what  God  is  most  ex- 
actingly  demanding,  he  is  always  providing  himself  a 
lamb  to  supply.  It  makes  no  great  difference  whether 
we  conceive  this  lesson  by  action,  to  be  given  outside 
of  the  church  or  in  it ;  for  it  could  have  been  there 
and  is  wanted  here.  It  is  alphabetic,  any  way,  and 
the  book  is  to  come  after  the  alphabet  is  made. 

Having  given  us  five  books  of  scripture,  Moses  will 
naturally  be  put  down  as  a  scripture  character.  He 
was  born  moreover  of  the  Jewish  stock.  And  yet,  as 
he  was  a  foundling,  picked  up  in  the  flags  of  the  Nile, 
and  carried  directly  into  the  Egyptian  court,  to  be 
brought  up  as  the  son  of  Pharaoh's  daughter — nursed 
meantime  for  only  a  little  while  by  his  own  Jewish 
mother — and  largely  separated  afterward  from  his 
race,  scarcely  knowing  more,  it  would  seem,  than  the 
fact  of  his  mere  blood-connection  ;  as  he  was  entered 
directly  into  the  Egyptian  schools,  and  applied  him- 
self with  such  enthusiasm  as  to  master  all  the  learn- 
ing of  the  Egyptians,  who  at  that  time  were  the  fore- 
most of  all  peoples,  especially  in  science ;  and  as  we 
find  him  afterwards  building  a  close  commonwealth, 
that  is  not  in  any  sense  Abrahamic  or  pastoral,  but 
territorial  and  legal  and  penal,  set  off  in  orders  and 
tiers  both  priestly  and  civil,  and  having  incorporate 
in  its  laws  all  the  Egyptian  therapeutics,  and  partly 


360  THE   OUTSIDE    SAINTS. 

their  notions  of  clean  and  unclean  food — having:  all 
these  facts  to  be  digested,  our  minds  preponderate  in 
the  conviction  that  he  is  to  be  conceived,  up  to  early 
manhood,  as  a  properly  Egyptian  character.  But  the 
fact  of  his  Jewish  origin  had  reached  him,  and  by 
force  of  that  he  broke  out  in  the  naturally  explosive 
heat  of  his  youth,  to  be  the  avenger  of  a  much  abused 
kinsman  of  his  people.  From  that  moment  he  was 
launched  in  his  mission,  as  yet  even  to  himself  un- 
known, and  being  obliged  to  flee  for  his  life,  he  is 
taken  far  away  to  the  region  back  of  Horeb,  where 
God  has  him  forty  years  in  training,  to  get  him  quali- 
fied in  the  matter  of  a  religion.  There  also  it  is 
that  afterward,  Jethro,  his  father-in-law,  a  priest  of 
Midian,  intervenes  to  be  his  teacher  and  counselor, 
and  Jethro  is  a  wholly  outside  man,  grandly  religious 
and  nobly  just,  able  also  to  help  him  in  his  religious 
development.  He  also  comes  back  to  him  after  the 
exode,  with  his  nobly  paternal  and  statesmanlike  ad- 
vice, sketching  for  him — Midian  for  Israel — a  complete 
and  masterly  outline  of  his  whole  civil-service  plan. 
So  that,  on  the  whole,  we  are  led  to  look  on  Moses  as 
a  virtual  outsider  himself,  down  to  the  time  of  his 
call  in  the  burning  bush.  His  religion,  as  we  can  see, 
is  mainly  by  God's  immediate  light,  getting  appar- 
ently no  help  below,  save  from  a  man  whose  religious 
traditions,  if  he  has  any,  are  as  far  out  of  all  historic 
connection  as  his  own. 

A  strangely  curious  episode  challenges  our  attention 
next,  in  the  case  of  Balaam,  the  eastern  soothsayer. 


THE   OUTSIDE    SAINTS.  361 

This  man  is  a  great  problem,  at  best,  and  specially 
in  his  religious  inspirations.  The  sharpness,  and 
beauty,  and  truly  evangelic  richness  of  his  oracles,  are 
really  inimitable.  There  is  nothing  finer  in  the  Scrip- 
ture, or  at  all  more  vigorously  self-evidencing.  Nor 
is  it  any  objection  that  divination  was  forbidden,  about 
this  time,  by  Moses,  and  declared  to  be  an  abomina- 
tion to  the  Lord  ;  for  it  had  not  been  forbidden  to 
Balaam  and  the  Mesopotamians.  And  therefore  it 
was  only  natural,  perhaps,  that  he  should  mix,  or  be 
supposed  to  mix,  enchantments  with  his  oracles — just 
as  our  astrologists  and  alchemists  sought  religious 
light  with  mixtures  of  incantation.  He  was  certainly 
faithful  to  his  convictions,  against  all  the  blandish- 
ments employed  to  win  his  consent.  On  the  whole,  I 
think  this  man  would  be  acknowledged  universally, 
in  his  truly  weird  story  and  character,  as  a  man  pro- 
foundly enlightened  by  God's  secret  revelations,  if  it 
were  not  for  the  very  harsh  strictures  put  upon  him 
afterwards,  by  the  perhaps  unjust  prejudice  of  the 
Jews. 

In  the  book  and  character  of  Job  we  have  another 
and  more  grand  episode,  so  to  speak,  in  the  historic 
train  of  the  Bible.  Job  is  not  a  Jew;  the  book  is 
clearly  not  a  Jewish  book  ;  for  there  are,  in  fact,  no 
Jewish  references  or  allusions  in  it.  The  world  of 
thought  which  it  opens  is  a  new,  un-Jewish,  outside 
i  world.  The  piety  is  real  and  profound,  but  unhis- 
torical,  out  of  all  connection  with  the  Bible  history. 
The  argument  is  a  matter  by  itself,  supposing  a  de- 
31 


362  THE   OUTSIDE   SAINTS. 

bate  with  opinions  not  Jewish.  And  thus  you  have 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  books  of  the  Scripture — 
a  book  that  reveals  the  clearest  evidences  of  inspira- 
tion, and  presents  the  highest  summits  of  sublimity  in 
thought  and  diction,  which  is,  in  fact,  the  book  of  an 
outsider ;  some  prince  of  the  Land  of  Uz,  some  Ara- 
bian or  Mesopotamian  poet,  some  Persian  or  Baby- 
lonish teacher,  wrestling  with  the  great  themes  of 
God  and  human  life,  in  the  uncovenanted  mercies  of 
an  alien,  framing  thus  a  theodicy  or  vindication  of  God, 
for  all  the  after-ages  of  the  world  and  the  church. 

At  a  later  period  we  have  the  example  of  Cyrus, 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  and  best  characters  of  the 
ancient  history,  a  great  commander  and  conqueror, 
a  great  statesman,  according  to  Xenophon  a  great 
benefactor  to  his  people,  humane  and  just,  and  withal 
a  protector  and  firm  friend  of  the  people  of  God.  He 
it  was  that  gave  the  decree  to  Ezra,  providing  him 
with  funds  and  forces  to  go  back  and  build  the  temple 
of  his  religion,  saying — "  the  God  of  Israel  he  is 
God."  And  the  reason  of  his  conduct  is  given  by  the 
prophet,  who  declares  that  God  unseen  has  holden  his 
right  hand,  raised  him  up  in  righteousness,  and  direct- 
ed all  his  ways.  He  was  a  monotheist  in  his  re- 
ligion, as  all  the  Persians  were,  and  was  therefore  con- 
scious of  no  change  in  the  favor  he  showed  to  the  peo- 
ple of  God ;  but  the  prophet  declares  that  God  has  all 
the  while  been  visiting  him  unseen,  and  tempering 
him  to  his  own  high  counsel — "  I  have  called  thee  by 
thy  name,  I  have  surnamed  thee  though  thou  hast  not 


THE   OUTSIDE    SAINTS.  363 

known  me."  And  it  is  a  great  felicity  in  this  ex- 
ample that  the  unseen  access  and  visitation  of  God  are 
so  grandly  affirmed  in  it.  What  better  footing  of 
original,  first-hand  discovery  could  be  desired. 

At  the  very  opening  of  the  New  Testament  we  en- 
counter the  Magi,  religiously  related,  in  a  sense,  to 
Cyrus.  They  were  priests  of  the  Medo-Persian  re- 
ligion ;  astrologers  living  among  the  stars,  and  watch- 
ing there,  to  spell  God's  oracle,  in  the  changing  mo- 
tions. And  many  of  them  too  became  so  raised  and 
spiritualized  in  habit,  as  to  be  not  unfitly  honored  by 
the  guidance  of  a  star,  and  led  in  to  offer  the  world's 
first  tribute  of  worship  to  the  new-born  Messiah. 

The  Syrophenician  woman,  whose  faith  the  Saviour 
so  heartily  commended,  was  a  Pagan-born  woman 
probably,  and  by  some  heavenly  guidance,  not  unlike- 
ly, went  to  Christ  for  help. 

The  case  of  Cornelius  we  have  traced  already. 
That  of  the  centurion  was  like  it.  And  in  deliberate 
comparison  of  his  character  with  that  of  his  own  coun- 
trymen, Christ  says — "  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  I  have  not 
found  so  great  faith,  no,  not  in  Israel."  And  he  can 
not  stop  there — "  I  say  unto  you  that  many  shall  come 
from  the  east  and  from  the  west,  and  from  the  north 
and  from  the  south — all  these  from  the  outside — and 
shall  sit  down  with  Abraham,  and  Isaac,  and  Jacob, 
in  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  But  the  children  of  the 
kingdom  shall  be  cast  out  into  outer  darkness." 

I  might  also  turn  off  here  and  gather  in  a  roll  of 
names  from  classic  story  ;  such  as  Numa,  Marcus  An- 


364  THE    OUTSIDE   SAINTS. 

toninus,  Plotinus,  Plato,  and  his  master  Socrates  ;  the 
list  fully  given  would  be  a  long  one,  and  I  have  no 
room  left  me  to  sketch  the  persons,  or  verify  them  as 
men  whom  God  has  called  to  be  partakers  in  his  pri- 
vate light.  I  can  only  say  that  the  Greek  and  Roman 
literature,  still  preserved  to  us  as  that  of  most  Pagan 
peoples  is  not,  allows  us  to  look  directly  into  the  work- 
ing of  the  religious  nature,  in  multitudes  of  serious, 
thoughtful  men  outside  of  revelation,  and  to  see  just 
where  they  are — their  notions  of  God  and  the  better 
notions  they  are  struggling  after,  their  half-discoveries, 
their  expressed  longings  after  a  revelation,  their  sighs, 
suspirations  and  prayers,  their  belief  in  dreams  and 
lying  down  for  dreams,  their  gropings  or  almost  find- 
ings, their  premonitions,  their  sturdy  argumentations, 
their  trances  of  contemplation.  Instead  of  finding 
them  quite  dead  to  such  themes,  it  is  as  if  their  re- 
ligious nature  were  packed  full  of  questions,  and  the 
Spirit  of  God  were  just  about  to  burst  open  their 
prison  and  let  them  out  into  the  day.  They  even  go 
long  journeys,  hoping  to  find  perchance  some  one  who 
can  tell  them  what  they  want  to  know.  Their  own 
yearnings  sometimes  put  them  in  a  state  in  which  they 
lay  hold  of  Christ,  at  the  very  first  discovery,  even  as 
a  starving  man  of  bread.  Thus  it  is  that  multitudes 
of  souls  without  a  Bible,  are  turning  God  ward  here 
and  there,  as  being  inwardly  sought  after  by  God. 
Even  as  Paul  says  to  the  Athenians — "  though  he  be 
not  far  from  every  one  of  us  ;  for  in  Him  we  live,  and 


THE    OUTSIDE   SAINTS.  365 

move,  and  have  our  being — for  we  are  also  his  off- 
spring." 

If  accordingly  we  go  apart  still  further  from  the 
region  of  mental  life  and  culture,  among  the  savage 
tribes,  for  example,  of  our  own  North  American  con- 
tinent, we  shall  find  many  traditions  that  seem  almost 
to  have  the  sanctity  of  a  revelation  ;  and  now  and  then 
a  character  appears  springing  up  as  a  strange  solitary 
flower  in  the  wilderness,  and  assuming  all  the  most 
remarkable  distinctions  of  a  genuine  piety — as  for  ex- 
ample in  the  wild  Indian  disciple  of  Brainard  ;  a  man 
who  lived  apart,  as  it  were,  from  his  time  and  people, 
coming  out  among  them  now  and  then  as  a  kind  of 
saint,  to  restrain  their  murderous  passions,  or  call  them 
away  from  the  ruinous  vice  of  drink  ;  and  when  he 
could  not  prevail,  running  off  into  the  woods  in  tears 
of  grief  which  he  could  not  restrain.  "  Ah,  there 
must  be  some  one,"  he  would  say,  "  who  thinks  like 
me  ;  where  shall  I  find  him  V  So  also  there  came  to 
light  not  long  ago  in  the  wilds  of  Africa,  a  woman 
who  had  been  praying  many  years  to  some  Power  Un- 
known, and  who,  as  soon  as  the  story  of  Jesus  was 
given  her,  exclaimed — "  O  that  is  he,  the  same  that  I 
have  found,  and  now  have  always  wTith  me."  And 
what  should  be  more  credible  than  just  such  visita- 
tions, occurring  here  and  there  among  peoples  most 
unfavored  ?  If  God  is  a  being  whom  we  need  to 
know  and  naturally  yearn  after,  and  if  he  wants  to 
bestow  himself  on  us,  why  should  we  wonder  that  he 
sometimes  finds  a  way  through  even  incapacity  itself, 
31* 


366  THE   OUTSIDE   SAINTS. 

bringing  his  unchurehly  help  and  sympathy  to  the 
miserably  forlorn  one  in  his  outcast  lot? 

I  will  not  pursue  this  exposition  farther.  I  have 
undertaken  to  show  you  what  God  is  doing  and  can 
do,  for  the  outsiders  of  his  Bible  and  church.  And  to 
make  the  exposition  more  convincing,  I  have  taken 
my  examples  almost  wholly  from  the  part  such 
outside  men  have  had  in  the  Bible  story  itself.  God 
has  had  his  witnesses,  you  now  see,  in  every  age  of  the 
world,  apart  from  all  connection  with  his  covenant, 
and  the  organic  institutions  of  his  grace  in  the  earth  ; 
men  that  have  been  visited  and  called  by  him  in  the 
solitudes  of  nature,  and  there  have  burned  as  the  si- 
lent, separated  lights  of  their  times. 

It  now  remains  to  say  that,  in  tracing  this  subject,  I 
have  had  deliberate  respect  altogether  to  uses  needed 
by  ourselves,  in  our  inside  field  of  gospel  truth  and 
privilege.  My  object  has  not  been,  to  answer  the  per- 
haps merely  curious  question,  what  possibilities  are 
given  to  idolaters  and  heathens,  but  to  gain  a  position 
of  discovery  in  regard  to  the  Bible  itself — how  it 
came,  how  to  use  it,  what  to  get  under  it,  and  do  for 
it ;  what  need  of  it,  in  a  word,  the  inside  people  have, 
and  how  they  are  to  get  their  best  advantage  from  it. 

First  of  all,  then,  we  are  not  to  judge  that  the 
mere  possibility  of  a  revelation  outside  of  the  Bible 
supersedes  the  want  of  it.  That  was  not  the  opinion 
of  God  when  he  sent  his  angel,  even  by  miracle,  to 
Cornelius,  to  put  him  in  the  way  of  an  apostle,  who 


THE    OUTSIDE   SAINTS.  367 

should  teach  him  Christ  and  baptize  him  in  the  faith 
of  a  disciple.  The  souls  most  enlightened  too  by  cul- 
ture have  been  most  apt  to  sigh  for  authorized  teach- 
ers and  appointed  rites,  and  a  veritable  revelation. 
Having  gleams  of  insight,  and  almost  visions  of  God, 
they  wanted  it  the  more.  They  sighed,  and  waited, 
and  even  groaned  for  it,  knocking  piteously  at  the 
gate  they  knew  not  how  to  open.  And  such  as  nei- 
ther sighed,  nor  groaned,  nor  cared,  only  wanted  it  the 
more.  Christ  not  wanted !  the  Bible  not  wanted  ! 
just  as  well  to  be  without  a  revelation  !  What  could 
show  more  affectingly  the  insupportable  destitution  of 
such  a  state,  than  the  gropings  and  only  casual  find- 
ings of  its  hungry  millions?  Doubtless  there  is  a  pos- 
sible salvation  for  all  men  without  a  revelation — I 
verily  believe  there  is — but  a  naked  possibility  is  alas  ! 
how  slender  a  footing,  where  the  interest  and  peril  are 
so  great. 

Then  again,  secondly,  having  reached  this  conclu- 
sion as  regards  the  immense  want  of  a  revelation,  and 
of  Christ  as  a  Saviour,  let  no  one  turn  the  blame  upon 
God,  that  what  is  so  much  wanted  everywhere,  is  not 
everywhere  given.  Doubtless  God  might  rain  show- 
ers of  Bibles,  just  as  he  does  the  showers  of  rain  all 
over  the  lands  and  even  seas  of  the  world,  but  he 
must  also  rain  written  languages  too,  and  a  power  to 
read  them,  beside.  And  then  the  readers,  if  they 
were  read,  would  want  to  know  how  the  book  grew  to 
be  a  book,  the  revelation  how  revealed.  And  there 
was  no  way  but  to  begin,  here  and  there,  with  natures 


368  THE    OUTSIDE    SAINTS. 

most  open,  most  susceptible,  gathering  in  their  several 
seeings  and  testimonies,  and  bodying  for  holy  truth 
the  word  they  have  received.  If  a  Bible  could  be 
gotten  up  mechanically,  as  showers  are  gotten  up  in 
the  chambers  of  the  sky,  it  might  be  justly  concluded 
that  all  men  ought  to  have  it.  But  it  has  first  to  be 
incarnated,  so  to  speak,  and  wrought  into  humanity, 
much  as  Christ  was,  and  so  revealed  through  human- 
ity ;  for  the  fact  is  that  all  such  kind  of  truths  must  be 
enunciated  in  persons  ;  even  as  the  truths  of  astronomy 
require  to  be  enunciated  in  orbs  and  orbits.  And 
then,  forever  after,  the  truth  has  to  be  lived  over  and 
acted  out,  by  a  kind  of  reincarnation  in  good  men's 
lives,  in  order  to  have  its  meaning.  There  must  be  a 
ministry  of  love  and  character  going  with  it ;  graces 
to  shine,  patience  to  suffer,  sacrifices,  labors,  prayers, 
ordinances  and  rites  of  worship,  and  assemblies  kin- 
dled by  their  glow,  else  the  book  is  dead,  or  too  nearly 
so,  both  for  want  of  meaning  and  of  evidence.  And 
so  you  perceive  that  Bibles  could  not  be  made  faster 
than  men  are  good  enough  to  have  revelations  made 
through  them ;  and  could  not  be  multiplied  or  dissem- 
inated faster  or  farther  than  the  graces  of  love  and 
sacrifice,  and  the  patiently  enduring  and  bravely  dar- 
ing enterprises  are  quickened,  that  shall  carry  them 
abroad  and  preach  them.  Bibles  therefore  can  not 
outgrow  or  outrun  the  church.  And  God  is  not  to 
blame  for  this.  However  much  they  are  wanted,  they 
can  not,  in  the  nature  of  things,  out-travel  the  grace 
they  nourish.     If  it  takes  a  million  of  years  to  get 


THE    OUTSIDE    SAINTS.  369 

them  published  in  this  way  everywhere,  then  it  must 
take  a  million  of  years.  Enough  that  Christ  began  to 
speed  them  on,  at  once,  by  his  word,  saying — "  Be- 
hold the  fields  already  white  to  the  harvest."  And 
again  that  he  gave  it  for  his  parting  charge — "  Go  ye 
into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  gospel  to  every 
creature."  Long  ages  ago,  God  was  ready,  going  be- 
fore his  people,  wanting  to  be  revealed  in  every  soul's 
knowledge.  O  ye  long-delaying  ages,  linger  no  more. 
Gird  us  with  salvation,  Lord,  for  the  dear  Bible's  sake, 
that  we  may  give  it  speedily  to  every  hungry,  darkened 
soul  on  earth ! 

But  here  another  and  third  lesson  meets  us ;  viz., 
that  we  are  not  to  push  the  dissemination  of  this  gos- 
pel by  any  false  argument  that  dishonors  God.  Tell 
us  not  that  every  idolater,  every  man  ignorant  of 
Christ  must  perish — does  everlastingly  perish.  Why 
should  we  push  ourselves  to  this  work  of  gospeling 
the  world,  by  putting  it  on  God,  that  he  has  given  no 
possibility  of  life  to  so  many  millions  of  immortal 
creatures,  reserving  them  all  unto  wrath,  just  because 
they  were  born  into  a  lot  of  darkness  ?  Rather  let  us 
tell  what  God  is  doing  always  for  them,  how  nigh  he 
is  to  them,  how  tenderly  he  works  in  them,  what  pos- 
sibilities he  opens  for  them,  and  how  certainly  he 
sometimes  gains  them  to  his  love.  Let  it  be  enough 
that  their  disadvantages  are  so  great ;  that  they  are 
humbled  to  a  point  so  low  by  their  idols,  rotted  into 
falsehood,  buried  in  lust  and  shame,  made  crafty,  per- 
fidious, cruel  and  wretched  in  society  ;  not  finding  how 


370  THE    OUTSIDE    SAINTS. 

to  interpret  their  own  longings  in   religion,  when  such 
longings  rise,  or  to  climb  up  out  of  the  thraldom  in 
which  they  lie.     Then,  as  we  are  so  gloriously  privi- 
leged, what  shall  we  do  but  give  them  our  privilege, 
and  have  it  as  argument  enough  that  if  we  do  it  not, 
we  show  how  very  little  our  privilege  has  done  for  us. 
Meantime,  fourthly,  let  us  have  it  as  one  of  our 
most  sacred  duties  to  the  Bible,  not  to  use  it,  so  as  to 
shut  ourselves  and  all  that  have  it,  away  from  God's 
immediate  revelation  by  it.     The  external,  verbal  rev- 
elation is  not  given  to  be  a  substitute  for  the  internal 
and  immediate,  but  to  be  a  guide  into  that.     We  are 
to  find  God  after  all  by  an  immediate  knowledge  our- 
selves, just  as  all  the  outside  saints  have  found  him, 
only  with  an  immense  help  in  the  Bible,  which  they 
had  not.     We  are  not  to  know  God  simply  as  reading 
the  book,  and  getting  notions  or  distillations  of  dogma 
and  catechism  from  it  in  our  head,  living  thus  on  a 
mere  second-hand  knowledge.     That  is  making  a  fence 
of  the  book,  requiring  us  to  get  all  light  from  it,  and 
not  from  God.     No,  the  Bible  is  received  only  when 
it  is  spiritually  discerned ;  that  is  when  it  brings  us 
in  where  God  is,  to  know  him  by  our  faith  and  love, 
and   have   him    in    a   first-hand   knowledge,  even   as 
Abraham  had,  or  Job,  or  Jethro,  or  Cornelius.     And 
then  when  the  unbelievers  about  us  complain  that  God 
is  so  far  off,  wondering  "why  he  does  not  show  himself 
to  his  children,  if  he  exists,  by  signs  and  wonders  that 
can  not  be  doubted,  we  shall  not  have  made  their  dif- 
ficulty just  what  it  is  ourselves,  by  setting  up  the  Bible 


THS    OUTSIDE    SAINTS.  371 

as  the  sum  and  last  limit  of  knowledge,  and  not  as  a 
helper  to  find  it.  If  we  desire  to  know  Boston, 
the  map  of  the  way  will  not  show  it,  but  will  only 
take  ns  thither,  and  let  us  get  the  knowledge  for  our- 
selves. The  Bible  in  like  manner  tells  us  how  others 
found  Him,  that  we  may  find  Him  also.  We  do  not 
know  God  in  simply  knowing  their  work.  We  only 
know  him  by  an  immediate  knowledge,  even  as  they 
did.  If  we  use  the  book  only  for  the  notions,  or  the 
second-hand  knowledge  it  gives  us,  we  even  make  a 
barrier  of  it,  and  put  God  further  away.  The  right  use 
of  it  will  not  give  us  notions  about  God,  but  God  him- 
self. It  will  make  God  nigh,  and  make  it  felt  that  he 
is  nigh,  both  to  ourselves  and  to  others,  present  to 
knowledge,  pressing  into  knowledge  in  all  human 
breasts. 

It  is  a  most  sad  thing,  my  friends,  that  many  of  you, 
not  in  the  way  of  religion,  so  little  conceive  the  near- 
ness of  God  to  you.  You  know  the  Bible,  and  what 
may  be  known  about  God  as  reported  in  it,  still  noth- 
ing appears  to  be  concluded  ;  you  are  not  established 
in  any  thing,  but  filled  with  questions  only,  and  put 
groping.  The  Bible,  after  all,  leaves  God  a  practically 
hidden  subject,  and  you  turn  away  from  it,  wondering 
still  where  God  is,  and  why  he  does  not  somehow 
show  himself.  Little  do  you  conceive  how  very  nigh 
he  is,  and  how  he  is  pressing  in,  through  the  Bible, 
through  nature,  everywhere  and  always,  to  be  known 
by  you,  and  by  every  human  creature  in  the  world. 
It  is  with  you  here  and  with  all  men,  as  it  is  with  cer- 


372  THE    OUTSIDE    SAINTS. 

tain  valleys  in  our  great  country,  where  the  soil  is  un- 
derlaid with  vast  stores  of  water,  pressing  upward  to 
get  vent,  and  the  people  have  nothing  required  to  set 
fountains  spouting  at  their  doors,  but  simply  to  bore  a 
passage  through  the  crust  of  earth,  and  let  the  waters 
up.  Just  so  all  created  mind  is  underlaid  with  the 
knowledge  of  God,  having  oracles  set  in  its  secret 
depths,  so  that  whosoever  will  let  the  everlasting  love 
and  presence  force  itself  in,  or  up,  will  have  an  imme- 
diate and  pure,  an  original  and  free  knowledge,  a  liv- 
ing water  that  will  freshen  its  life  and  slake  its  thirst 
forever.  He  gives  you  his  revelation  without,  only 
that  he  may  be  thus  revealed  within.  He  loves  to  be 
known,  publishes  himself  in  all  things  visible,  speaks 
in  all  things  audible,  fills  all  height  and  depth  with 
his  presence,  besets  you  behind  and  before  by  his 
counsel,  and  there  is  no  soul  living  that  he  does  not 
breathe  in  by  his  Spirit.  All  souls  are  his  children, 
yours  among  the  number.  As  he  came  to  Job,  and 
Cyrus,  and  Cornelius,  so  he  will  to  you,  if  only  you 
are  sufficiently  opened  to  him  by  your  prayers  and 
alms,  and  works  of  faith  to  let  him  in.  Having 
one  revelation  of  Christ  in  your  hand,  you  will  have 
another  in  your  heart.  You  will  grow  into  a  full,  orig- 
inal, clear  beholding,  not  needing  that  any  man  teach 
you,  having  that  anointing  that  teacheth  all  things. 
This  is  your  privilege — would  that  you  could  see  it — 
in  this  light  of  God  to  live,  and  in  its  ever  brightening 
splendor  to  die. 

In  closing  this  snbject  let  us  not  forget  to  cast  a 


THE   OUTSIDE   SAINTS.  373 

glance  forward  to  the  future  life,  in  which  all  right1 
eous  souls  are  to  be  gathered.  Many  of  them  will  be- 
long to  the  class  of  inside  saints,  some  to  the  class  of 
outside  saints ;  the  former  will  have  known  Christ  all 
their  lives  long,  and  been  fashioned  by  his  new  cre- 
ating gospel  and  character;  the  latter  will  now  meet 
him  perhaps  for  the  first  time,  and  will  salute  him  in 
blissful  discovery,  as  the  unknown  friend  they  had  al- 
ways with  them,  and  the  conscious  helper  of  their  life. 
When  therefore,  my  brethren,  you  lift  your  song  of 
praise  to  the  Lamb,  some  of  these  will  be  able  to 
tell  you  more  of  his  worth,  it  may  be,  by  their 
want  of  him,  and  their  struggles  after  God  with- 
out him,  than  you  by  all  you  have  gotten  from  him. 
To  meet  and  commune  with  these  outside  saints, 
outside  no  longer — how  blessed  will  it  be  ?  And 
what  a  beautiful  variety  will  they  give  to  the  gen- 
eral brotherhood !  They  are  brothers  whom  you 
did  not  know,  but  you  embrace  them  even  the 
more  tenderly,  and  hold  them  in  the  dearest  honor. 
Thus  grandly  now  is  the  Master's  word  fulfilled — 
"  Other  sheep  I  have  which  are  not  of  this  fold ; 
them  also  I  must  bring,  and  they  shall  hear  my  voice, 
and  there  shall  be  one  fold  and  one  shepherd." 
32 


XIX. 

FREE  TO  AMUSEMENTS,  AND  TOO  FREE  TO 
WANT  THEM. 


"  If  any  of  them  that  believe  not  bid  you  to  a  feast,  and  ye  be  dis- 
posed to  go,  whatever  is  set  before  you  eat,  asking  no  question  for  con- 
science'sake." — 1  Cur.  10:   27. 

These  feasts  to  which  the  Corinthian  disciples  are 
invited,  are  sometimes  rated  by  the  apostle  himself  as 
"  banqnetings  and  abominable  idolatries."  Though 
probably  the  feasts  thus  designated  were  the  great  reli- 
gious festivals,  which  were  often  mere  orgies  of  lust — 
celebrated  of  course,  not  by  invitation,  but  at  times 
of  stated  recurrence.  The  feasts  to  which  he  is  refer- 
ring here  appear  to  be  only  ordinary  entertainments 
or  feasts  of  invitation ;  though  even  at  these  the  guest 
will  not  seldom  encounter  many  disgusting  excesses 
and  laxities  of  behavior — a  fact  which  even  makes  it 
somewhat  remarkable,  that  a  disciplinarian  as  positive 
and  faithful  as  our  great  apostle,  does  not  forbid  the 
acceptance  of  such  invitations. 

I  discover  two  points  included  in  the  advice  he 
gives,  neither  of  which  stands  out  on  the  face  of  his 
words,  but  they  only  need  to  be  named  to  be  dis- 
tinctly seen.  The  first  is  that  down  upon  the  low 
plane  of  mere  ethical  observance,  he  does  not  think  it 

(374) 


FREE   TO    AMUSEMENTS,    ETC.  375 

incumbent  on  him,  as  a  teacher  of  the  gospel,  to 
enforce  any  Puritanically  close  terms  of  restrictive 
morality.  It  is  not  for  him  to  legislate  over  such 
questions.  In  this  field  the  disciples  must  have  their 
own  liberty,  and  be  responsible  for  their  own  judg- 
ments and  the  right  understanding  of  their  own  liabil- 
ities. So  far  the  world's  law  is  also  theirs,  and  he  will 
not  undertake  at  all  to  settle  the  casuistries  occurring 
under  it.  And  to  set  them  on  a  yet  manlier  footing 
of  liberty,  he  shoves  restriction  still  further  away  by 
telling  them,  when  they  accept  such  an  invitation,  to  go 
with  a  free  mind,  hampered  by  no  foolish  scruples  that 
will  make  them  an  annoyance,  both  to  the  host  and 
the  company. 

So  far  then  he  sets  them  free — free  that  is  in  the 
exercise  of  their  own  responsible  judgment,  clear  of 
any  mere  scruples  not  intelligent.  But  we  have 
scarcely  noted  the  position  given  them  under  this  lib- 
erty, when  we  begin  to  see  that  he  is  thinking  of  a 
second,  higher  kind  of  liberty  for  them,  which,  in  his 
own  view,  makes  the  other  quite  insignificant.  Thus 
he  drops  in,  as  it  were  in  undertone,  at  the  middle  of  his 
sentence,  this  very  brief  but  very  significant  clause — 
"  and  ye  be  disposed  to  go  " — putting,  I  conceive,  a 
partly  sad  cadence  in  his  words,  as  if  saying  inwardly, 
I  trust  not  many  will  be  so  disposed ;  for  the  dear  love 
of  God,  in  the  glorious  liberty  of  our  discipleship, 
ought  to  be  a  liberty  too  full,  and  sweet,  and  positive, 
and  blessed,  to  allow  any  such  hankering  after 
questionable     pleasures     and    light-minded    gaieties. 


376  frep:  to  amusements, 

In  that  we  are  free,  and  in  this  more  free ;  too 
free  to  want  the  other  kind  of  freedom,  or  care  any- 
thing for  it.  Which  distinction  thus  developed  I 
now  propose  to  use,  in  its  application  to  another,  but 
not  very  different  subject ;  viz.,  the  true  law  and  right 
use  of  amusements.  I  think  we  can  see  that  the  apostle 
would  speak  on  this  question,  precisely  as  he  does  of 
mingling  in  the  entertainments  and  festivities  of  the 
unbelievers.  Indeed  the  two  matters  are  too  nearly 
one  to  be  easily  distinguished  in  their  reasons  and  gov- 
erning principles.  Entertainments  are  amusements, 
and  amusements  entertainments.     We  begin  then — 

I.  At  the  free ;  taking  up  the  question  of  amuse- 
ments as  a  question  of  ethics,  or  common  morality  ; 
which,  in  all  the  discussions  I  have  seen,  is  taken  to 
cover  the  whole  ground  of  the  subject ;  as  if  it  were 
the  only  matter  to  settle  our  opinion  of  what  is  right 
under  the  world's  law — what  is  proper,  becoming,  and 
safe.  And  here  it  is  that  the  apostle  begins,  though 
he  has  other  and  higher  points  to  raise,  we  shall  see, 
in  a  different  key.  In  this  view,  or  in  this  plane  of 
ethics,  it  is  not  to  be  judged  a  sin,  he  says,  if  you  go 
to  the  entertainments  where  you  are  invited.  It  may 
be,  or  it  may  not,  and  of  that  you  must  every  man 
judge  for  yourselves,  in  your  own  freedom,  at  your 
own  responsibility.  If  you  want  the  exhilaration, 
there  is  nothing  morally  wrong  in  exhilaration.  If 
you  want  the  festive  play,  such  play  is  forbidden  by 
no  common  principle  of  life.  But  it  is  incumbent  on 
you,  if  you  go,  that  you  go  to  be  one  with  the  com- 


AND   TOO    FREE   TO    WANT   THEM.  377 

pan y.  To  go  half  condemning  yourself  in  what  yon  al- 
low, to  go  packed  full  of  little  timid  scruples,  abstain- 
ing, questioning,  and  making  yourself  an  annoyance 
to  the  company,  is  even  a  christian  impropriety  or  ab- 
surdity planned  for  beforehand.  Undertaking  to  en- 
joy the  occasion  you  must  not  churlishly  mar  the 
enjoyment,  by  looking  askance  and  timidly  on  every 
thing  done.  You  must  not  be  asking  whether  this 
thing  or  that,  which  is  innocent  in  itself,  has  been 
flavored  by  some  form  of  incantation  ;  whether  this 
or  that  article  of  food  has  been  seasoned  from  a  cup 
partly  offered  in  libation.  Be  not  there  as  a  man  tied 
up  in  scruples,  but  as  a  man  rather  who  is  free,  and 
knows  how  to  enjoy  the  innocent  hilarities  of  the  oc- 
casion. If  you  speak  of  duty,  this  is  your  duty,  else 
it  was  your  duty  not  to  be  there.  You  are  not  there 
to  be  higgling  at  questions  of  casuistry  about  things 
innocent  in  themselves. 

Taking  now  this  ground,  we  have  a  broad,  just  plat- 
form-charter for  all  manner  of  amusements  not  licen- 
tious, or  corrupt,  or  indulged  beyond  the  limits  of  tem- 
perate use.  And  it  would  be  well  if  certain  over-rigid 
disciples,  and  teachers  of  religion,  much  honored  in  the 
former  times,  had  been  able  to  allow  and  justify  this 
kind  of  freedom.  Such  were  always  asking  questions 
for  conscience'  sake,  about  things  that  are  really  inno- 
cent in  every  thing  but  abuse  or  excess ;  and  gave  in 
this  manner  an  air  of  austerity  to  religion  that  was 
only  forbidding  and  repulsive ;  creating  reactions  also 
for  infidelity  or  the  total  rejection  of  religion  itself, 
32* 


378  FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS, 

that  have  been  growing  more  and  more  detrimental  in 
their  effect.  Happily  some  of  onr  most  forward  and 
capable  teachers  now  are  pressing  a  revision  of  the 
whole  matter,  and  cutting  loose  detentions  of  scruple, 
in  reference  to  a  great  part  of  the  amusements  that  in 
times  past  were  put  in  embargo.  They  take  up  the 
question  of  amusements  as  a  question  of  morality, 
and  bring  out  their  decisions  in  the  plane  of  ethical 
adjustment.  And  the  general  conclusion  is  that  of  the 
apostle — be  free,  only  be  responsible  for  all  excesses 
and  abuses.  Do  not  reduce  religion  to  the  grade  of  a 
police  arrangement,  and  make  it  a  law  of  restriction 
upon  the  world's  innocent  pleasures.  It  can  not  afford 
to  hold  a  position  so  odious,  and  withal  so  nearly  false  ; 
for  there  is  no  sound  principle  of  ethics  that  makes  it 
a  wrong,  or  a  sin,  to  indulge  in  plays  and  games  of 
amusement,  save  when  they  are  carried  beyond  amuse- 
ment, and  made  instruments  of  vice,  or  vicious  indul- 
gence ;  when  of  course  they  are  wrong,  even  as  feed- 
ing itself  may  be.  Why  strain  a  principle  of  restric- 
tion till  it  breaks,  and  lets  out  the  waters  of  sin  to 
sweep  it  clean  away,  and  all  sound  virtue  with  it  ? 
Draw  out  terms  of  detention  just  where  detention  is 
wanted,  and  not  a  long  way  back,  to  make  sure  of  al- 
lowing no  possible  danger.  Why,  there  is  danger  in 
food — must  we  therefore  keep  it  off  by  starvation,  or 
must  we  set  limits  on  it  by  the  right  use  of  our  liberty  ? 
There  is,  I  grant,  no  kind  of  amusement  that  may 
not  be  the  beginning  of  some  vicious  excess.  But  if 
we  are  to  cut  off  every  thing  which  has  a  danger  in  it, 


AND   TOO   FREE   TO   WANT   THEM.  379 

and  may  easily  run  itself  into  excess,  we  shall  have 
almost  nothing  left.  There  is  a  possible  intemperance 
even  in  the  use  of  water.  Dress  has  this  danger. 
Study  has  it.  There  is  no  kind  of  business  that  may 
not  easily  rush  itself  into  some  infatuation,  or  finally, 
some  course  of  fraud  that  blasts  the  character.  Polit- 
ical life — who  that  goes  into  it,  with  however  good  in- 
tentions, does  not  put  himself  in  fearfully  critical  mo- 
mentum towards  bad  associations,  and  selfish  combi- 
nations that  are  corrupt  ?  Even  religion  may  hurry 
itself  into  excesses  of  fanaticism,  that  rapidly  burn 
out  character.  Every  tiling  in  short  requires  self-reg- 
ulative prudence.  Innocent  in  itself,  it  can  be,  and 
very  often  is,  a  gate  that  opens  towards  excess.  The 
true  thing  to  be  said  is — all  these  things  are  free. 
Refuse  them  not,  but  have  a  guard  against  their  perils. 
We  can  not  refuse  every  thing  that  has  perils  in  it,  for 
then  we  should  stand  back  from  every  thing.  Take 
amusements  under  the  same  law ;  not  to  be  mastered 
by  them,  but  to  master  them,  and  be  just  so  much 
further  advanced  in  all  high  manly  virtues 

Sometimes  a  distinction  is  attempted  between  recre- 
tions  and  amusements.  But  as  all  recreations  are  in 
some  sense  amusements,  and  all  amusements  recrea- 
tive in  the  same  manner,  the  distinction  is  of  no  great 
value.  The  distinction  between  athletic  sports  and 
amusements  holds  good  partially,  because  of  the  gym- 
nastic effects  obtained  by  one,  and  not  by  the  other. 
Boating,  fishing,  hunting,  bowling,  base  ball,  and  the 
like,  have  a  certain  value  as  modes  of  athletic  exer- 


380  FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS, 

cise,  and  yet  there  is  not  one  of  them  that  may  not  be 
connected  with  gaming  or  some  other  kind  of  license. 
Let  every  man  have  his  liberty  in  them,  detained  by 
no  foolish  and  weak  scruples,  and  then  let  him  be  re- 
sponsible to  himself,  for  such  kind  of  practice  in  them 
as  belongs  to  a  pure,  well  kept  life.  Let  him  not  be 
afraid  to  enjoy  himself  in  them,  or  be  tormented  by 
foolish  misgivings,  as  if  it  must  be  wrong  to  have 
such  pleasures.  Ask  no  questions  for  conscience'  sake 
till  the  confines  of  just  use  are  reached. 

The  same  is  to  be  said  of  dancing.  If  there  be 
lewd  dances,  whether  round  or  square,  as  we  certainly 
know  there  are,  these  are  for  nobody.  Masquerade 
balls  are  contrived  possibilities  of  license,  and  belong 
to  high  society  only  when  it  runs  low.  Late  hours  of 
dancing,  in  crowded  assemblies,  heated  by  exhilarating 
bowls,  are  both  morally  and  physically  bad,  and  the 
true  discretion  is  to  avoid  what  takes  away  discretion. 
But  dancing  itself  is  beautiful  movement,  and  may 
well  be  a  recreation  wholly  innocent  and  pure.  Music 
is  the  chime  of  motion,  and  motion  in  the  beat  of  mu- 
sic touches  a  fine,  deep  law  of  the  creation.  And  if 
there  be  exhilaration  in  it,  why  should  there  not  be, 
when  the  rhythm  of  the  world  prepares  it  ? 

Billiards  have  been  largely  connected,  and  now  are, 
with  the  vices  of  drink  and  gambling.  The  public 
tables  of  cities  are  commonly  infested  by  this  danger. 
But  as  private  tables  multiply,  the  perils  of  the  game 
are  much  less  felt,  and  many  are  inquiring  whether 
any  other  indoor  amusement  can  be  found  that  is  less 


AND   TOO    FREE   TO    WANT   THEM.  381 

exceptionable  in  itself,  or  has  more  to  commend  it. 
Men  and  women  and  invalids  can  have  the  game  to- 
gether, and  it  is  not  in  any  sense  a  game  of  chance. 
It  provides  a  mild,  gently  athletic  exercise.  It  trains 
an  exact  eye,  and  an  exact  hand,  and  a  close  computa- 
tion of  the  combinations  of  causes,  all  of  which  arc 
gifts  of  great  value.  It  is  only  a  little  more  fascina- 
ting than  it  should  be,  and  is  likely  to  occupy  time 
that  should  be  given  to  other  things.  The  same  too 
may  be  said  less  emphatically  of  croquet,  which  is 
only  a  kind  of  out-door  billiards.  It  has,  too,  just 
as  little  inherent  connection  with  gaming.  Must 
we  add  that  when  billiards  are  practiced  at  pub- 
lic tables,  and  the  defeated  party  takes  the  expense  by 
forfeit,  with  perhaps  another  forfeit  in  cigars  and  wine, 
there  is  a  double  peril  incurred,  both  of  gaming  and 
of  a  drinking-habit.  All  such  dangers  are  factitious 
as  regards  the  play  itself,  and  will  less  and  less  appear 
when  it  is  an  accepted  pastime,  and  is  set  in  its  proper 
place. 

Games  of  chance,  like  cards,  and  dominoes,  and 
backgammon,  have  a  certain  recreative  value,  but 
no  value  as  exercise.  They  are  objected  to  by  many 
because  they  are  games  of  chance ;  and,  to  a  certain 
extent,  with  reason ;  for  if  any  young  person  gets 
absorbed  in  that  kind  of  game,  so  far  as  to  have  the 
habit  of  his  mind  cast  by  it,  he  is  just  so  far  incapaci- 
tated for  the  wise  conduct  of  life.  Who  can  be  weak- 
er or  more  nearly  a  fool,  than  a  man  who  goes  into 
life  looking  for  luck  in  every  thing,  expecting  to  get 


382  FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS, 

on  by  luck  and  seeing  really  no  other  hope.  Still 
there  is  a  certain  diversion  in  seeing,  for  an  hour,  how 
chances  go,  and  even  a  kind  of  instruction  beside ;  for 
a  great  many  things  in  the  world  are  turned,  as  far  as 
our  human  perception  goes,  by  what  to  us  are  chances. 
The  sound  rule  here  appears  to  be,  that  no  one  should 
be  so  much  in  these  weaker  games,  as  to  be  addled 
by  them,  and  forget  that  carving  out  his  way  by  stout 
endeavor,  and  a  keen  perceptive  judgment  of  causes, 
is  the  true  manly  wisdom.  He  may  play  with  chances 
enough  to  see  how  they  go,  but  if  he  worships  them 
as  a  devotee,  and  lives  in  their  thin  atmosphere,  he 
will  be  as  nearly  nobody  as  he  can  be  and  be  a  man. 
Sometimes  it  is  urged  for  these  lighter  games  that  they 
make  society.  Rather  say  substitute  society  ;  for  that 
is  their  worst  objection.  To  shuffle,  and  cut,  and  deal, 
and  throw  the  dice,  are  exactly  not  society,  but  when 
over  indulged  are  just  the  way  to  keep  it  off,  and  make 
an  empty-headed  play  of  the  fingers,  the  only  accom- 
plishment learned  or  possible  to  be  enjoyed.  Conver- 
sation, humor,  social  and  intellectual  vivacity,  get  no 
place  to  grow  at  these  tables,  where  the  parties  wink 
and  do  not  speak,  and  where  the  glow  is  kindled  by 
the  chances ;  not  by  the  souls  engaged. 

The  opera  is  a  kind  of  amusement  that  is  furnished 
by  one  of  the  finest  of  the  fine  arts.  It  is  music  float- 
ing in  sentiment,  or  sentiment  dramatized  in  music. 
It  is  very  nearly  as  good  as  a  good  concert,  and  scarce- 
ly more  objectionable — only  it  can  be,  and  sometimes 
is,  a  great  deal  worse.     Be  it  as  it  may,  a  man  who 


AND   TOO    FREE   TO   WANT  THEM.  383 

finds  no  atmosphere  but  this  to  live  in,  no  food  but 
this  soft  luxury  to  enjoy,  will  turn  out  finally  to  be  a 
man  wholly  steeped  in  sentimentalities,  having  no 
great  purposes  and  manly  energies  left. 

The  theater  is  or  ought  to  be  the  most  robust  of  all 
amusements  not  athletic,  but  in  its  common  associa- 
tions, it  is  worst  and  really  lowest  of  all.  To  take  it 
in  this  day  and  find  amusement  in  it  requires  a  man 
some  way  down  the  scale  of  pure  sensibility  already  ; 
otherwise  the  atmosphere  will  have  a  smell  of  disgust. 
"Were  a  true  redemption  possible,  it  might  teach  great 
lessons  of  virtue  and  character,  and  be  even  more  and 
better  than  amusement.  If  sometime  a  man  asserts 
his  liberty  in  going,  he  will  yet  much  better  keep  his 
liberty  in  staying  away. 

So  far  we  go  in  tracing  the  right  of  amusements 
viewed  in  the  plane  of  morality,  or  moral  casuistry. 
Considering  the  question  on  its  mere  ethical  grounds, 
we  find  no  law  against  amusements,  but  only  against 
their  excesses  and  abuses.  As  Paul  said  to  the  Corin- 
thians so  we  say,  be  free  ;  make  up  no  mere  scheme  of 
legal,  self-restrictive,  or  ascetic  virtue.  Ask  no  ques- 
tions for  conscience'  sake,  such  as  badger  and  worry 
the  soul's  liberty.  Christianity  is  no  dog  Cerberus 
barking  at  the  gates  of  festivity,  and  galling  the  neck 
of  all  innocent  pleasures.  Least  of  all  does  it  contrive 
to  force  a  new  chapter  into  the  code  of  morals,  that 
was  not  in  it  before,  and  can  not  be  maintained  by  its 
accepted  principles. 

If  now  some  of  you  should  be  surprised  and  alarmed, 


384      .  FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS, 

by  the  exposition  thus  far  made, — the  same  which  is 
now  being  offered  by  many,  as  a  complete  exposition 
of  the  whole  subject — there  is  yet  another  and  very 
different  exposition  to  be  added,  which  is  even  the  dis- 
tinctly christian  part  of  it.  As  we  have  asserted  the 
free,  so  we  now  go  on — 

II.  To  assert  the  more  free.  Thus  the  apostle,  when 
he  slides  in  his  subjunctive  clause — "  and  ye  be  dis- 
posed to  go " — does  it,  we  may  see,  regretfully  and 
with  a  feeling  sadly  overcast.  He  understands  that 
many  of  the  best  beloved,  godliest,  and  freest  of  the 
brotherhood  will  not  be  disposed  to  go,  could  not  in 
fact  be  so  disposed.  They  are  in  so  great  liberty  that 
their  inclination  itself  is  quite  taken  away,  and  he 
wishes,  how  tenderly,  it  were  so  with  all — as  alas,  he 
knows  it  is  not.  Did  he  want  himself  to  go  to  those 
feasts  of  the  unbelievers  ?  Could  he  think  with  desire 
of  having  a  good  time  there  and  being  greatly  re- 
freshed by  the  hilarities  of  the  guests  ?  And  why  not  ? 
We  can  not  imagine  such  a  thing,  and  why  not  %  Be- 
cause his  great  and  gloriously  Christed  soul  is  too  full, 
and  ranging  in  a  plane  of  joy  too  high,  to  think  of 
finding  a  pleasure  in  such  trifling  gaieties.  They  are 
chaff,  only  chaff,  to  him.  So  when  he  says — "  and  ye 
be  disposed  to  go,"  he  well  understands  that  there  are 
some  who  will  not  be  disposed.  Kept  back  by  no 
ascetic  scruples,  or  legal  restrictions  binding  their  con- 
sciences, they  will  be  kept  back  by  their  very  fullness 
and  freedom  and  the  uplifting  sense  of  Christ  which 
ennobles  their  life.     They  are  free  in  a  sense  to  do  it, 


AND   TOO    FREE   TO    WANT   THEM.  385 

but  they  are  also  more  free,  too  free  to  have  any  dispo- 
sition that  way.  Their  tastes  are  too  high,  their  incli- 
nations too  transcendently  pure,  and  the  gale  of  the 
spirit  raises  them  into  a  divine  liberty  that  is  itself  the 
crowning  state  of  life.  The  mere  hilarities  of  feasting 
are  too  coarse  and  tumultuous  to  suit  the  key  of  their 
feeling,  and  will  only  be  disturbances  of  their  peace. 
They  are  able  to  come  down  now  and  then  it  may  be, 
and  touch  the  plane  of  nature  in  ways  of  playfulness ; 
but  it  will  not  be  to  launch  themselves  on  tides  of  high 
excitement,  and  be  floated  clean  away,  but  only  to 
freshen  a  little  the  natural  zest  of  things,  and  keep  off 
the  moroseness  of  a  too  rigid  and  total  separation  from 
the  socialities  and  playtimes  of  the  world. 

Our  question  of  amusements  then  appears  to  be 
very  nearly  settled  by  the  tenor  of  the  distinctively 
christian  life  itself.  The  christian  in  so  far  as  he  is  a 
christian,  is  not  down  upon  the  footing  of  a  mere  eth- 
ical practice,  asking  what  he  may  do,  and  what  he  is 
restricted  from  doing,  under  the  legal  sanctions  of 
morality.  That  kind  of  motivity  is  very  much  gone 
by.  He  has  come  out  even  from  under  the  ten  com- 
mandments— mostly  negative  and  restrictive — into  the 
love-law  which  unites  him  to  God  and  his  neighbor. 
And  here,  out  of  his  mere  liberty  in  love,  he  will  do 
more  and  better  things  than  all  codes  of  ethics  and 
moral-law  commandments  require  of  him.  He  is  so 
united  to  God  himself,  through  Christ  and  the  Spirit, 
that  he  has  all  duty  in  him  by  a  free  inspiration.  For 
where  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  liberty.  He 
33 


386  FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS, 

acts  now  from  the  full,  not  from  the  empty ;  having 
inclinations  outrunning  mere  duties,  and  doing  all 
things,  so  to  speak,  by  the  overplus  of  joy.  He  is  not 
shriveled  in  scruple,  but  full-orbed  in  love ;  and  if  he 
asks,  at  all,  what  is  duty  to  be  done,  it  is  not  what  is 
duty  by  the  moral  code,  under  its  legal  motivities,  but 
only  what  is  due  to  the  supreme  affection  that  has 
united  him  to  God  and  His  Son.  So  that  when  you 
come  to  him  offering  some  kind  of  amusement,  he 
does  not  fall  back  straightway  on  his  conscience,  ask- 
ing whether  he  may  have  it,  or  trying  whether  he  can 
tease  the  reluctant  monitor  into  acquiescence, — he 
does  nothing  in  that  way  of  legal  exaction — but  he 
says  more  likely  to  the  offered  amusement,  "  No,  I  do 
not  want  it ;"  or,  in  the  apostle's  word,  "  I  am  not  dis- 
posed "  that  way.  And  this  he  does  without  debate 
of  privilege,  and  without  any  argument  of  constraint; 
he  must  even  constrain  himself  not  to  say  it.  Others 
looking  on  may  judge  that  he  is  under  they  know  not 
what  scruples,  and  is  making  himself  unhappy  by  not 
daring  to  claim  their  enjoyments,  but  it  is  they  that 
are  in  the  absurdity,  not  he.  He  is  only  too  free  in  his 
great,  nobly  divine  pleasures,  to  find  any  thing  but 
loss  and  meagre  littleness  in  theirs.  Their  world  is 
not  his  world,  and  he  has  renounced  their  world,  not 
because  he  must,  which  they  probably  think,  but 
because  he  has  gotten  by  it  and  above  it. 

And  here  is  the  reason,  I  conceive,  why  we  keep  on 
debating  this  question  as  we  do,  in  the  footing  of  the 
mere  moralities.     The  people  of  the  world   bring  it 


AND   TOO   FREE   TO    WANT  THEM.  387 

always  to  that  standard,  and  do  not  imagine  that 
christian  souls  can  bring  it  to  any  other.  And  even 
they,  when  taken  off'  from  so  many  amusements  by  the 
new  inspirations  of  their  life,  do  not  see  quite  likely 
that,  being  a  question  of  practice,  it  need  not  therefore 
be  a  question  of  mere  ethical  morality  ;  and  so  they  let 
it  be  debated  for  them  on  the  same  old  footing. 
Whereas  what  they  now  call  duty  is  a  wholly  different 
matter  ;  viz.,  what  is  due  to  their  new  footing  of  lib- 
erty and  unity  with  God.  And  it  turns  out  by  a  sim- 
ilar mistake,  that  graciously  enlightened  teachers 
themselves,  are  all  the  while  debating  the  question  of 
amusements,  even  for  christian  people,  as  if  it  were  a 
question  only  of  good  morals.  If  they  accurately  un- 
derstand where  christian  souls  really  are,  and  how,  in 
their  divine  ranges  of  liberty,  they  are  lifted  into  other 
dispositions  and  higher  kinds  of  enjoyment,  they 
would  put  the  question  of  amusements  in  a  very  differ- 
ent way.  It  is  not  the  question  whether  we  are  bound 
thus  and  thus,  in  terms  of  morality,  and  so  obliged  to 
abstain ;  but  whether,  as  our  new  and  nobler  life  im- 
pels, we  are  not  required,  in  full  fidelity,  to  pay  it 
honor,  and  keep  its  nobler  tastes  unmarred  by  descend- 
ing to  that  which  they  have  so  far  left  behind  them. 

It  may  be  well  to  put  the  question  in  a  different 
way,  which  yet  will  not  be  really  different  except  in 
the  form.  It  comes  to  us  every  hour,  that  men  who 
are  deeply  immersed  in  some  great  work,  or  cause, 
have  no  care  for  any  thing  else,  least  of  all  for  any 
thing  that  appears  to  be  trivial.     Indeed  almost  any 


388  FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS, 

thing  is  like  to  seem  trivial,  which  is  not  in  the  line  of 
their  engagement,  even  though  it  has  far  greater  con- 
sequence. Any  thing  which  has  become  the  supreme 
end  of  life,  sinks  the  significance  of  every  thing  else. 
In  the  pursuit  of  gain,  if  we  speak  of  nothing  higher, 
they  will  look  upon  amusements  how  commonly  as 
mere  nonsense,  and  will  sometimes  even  forget  the 
feeding  of  their  bodies.  How  then  will  it  be  when  a 
christian  man  has  become  thoroughly  engulfed  in  the 
work  and  cause  of  his  Master  ?  It  is  now  his  passion. 
He  wants  nothing  else.  He  only  wants  to  love  it 
more,  and  do  more  for  it,  and,  compared  with  this, 
every  thing  is  trivial ;  he  has  no  taste  for  the  gaieties 
of  mere  natural  pleasure.  Christian  people  are  set  off 
thus,  in  a  sense,  from  the  amusements  other  people 
delight  in,  by  the  stress  of  their  own  new  love,  and 
the  heavenly  engagements  into  which  it  brings  them. 
Of  course,  on  mere  ethical  grounds,  they  have  a 
right  to  do  just  what  every  body  has,  to  claim  all  the 
justifiable  amusements,  and  go  as  far  in  them  as  moral 
safety  may  allow,  but  to  claim  that  right,  they  must 
descend  a  long  way  into  the  spirit,  as  into  the  law,  of 
the  world,  and  be  really  of  it  themselves.  These 
things  we  say  are  innocent,  but  they  are  not  innocent 
to  them,  because  they  bring  down  a  spirit  lifted  far 
above  into  better  affinities,  and  nobler  ranges  of  good. 
Here  open  accordingly  some  very  deep  lessons  for 
christian  souls,  that  must  not  be  lost.  Being  not  sim- 
ply free,  as  all  men  are,  to  have  their  amusements, 
they  should  also  be  more  free,  free  enough  not  to  want 


AND   TOO   FREE   TO   WANT  THEM.  389 

them ;  or  to  want  them,  at  least,  only  in  some  very 
qualified  and  partial  way. 

A  young  christian,  for  example,  goes  to  his  pastor 
and  says,  "  There  is  going  to  be  a  masquerade  party, 
or  it  may  be  a  great  game  supper  and  dancing  party, 
where  many  of  my  friends  are  to  be,  and  I  am  invit- 
ed ;  will  it  be  wrong  for  me  to  go  ?"  "  No,  not  wrong, 
the  answer  must  be,  as  far  as  the  mere  question  of 
morality  is  concerned.  But  I  am  none  the  less  sorry 
to  see  that  you  want  to  be  there.  It  shows  that  you 
have  either  lost  ground,  or  that  you  have  not  gotten 
as  far  forward  as  I  hoped  in  your  christian  life.  You 
certainly  might  be  close  enough  to  your  Saviour  not  to 
be  disposed  to  go,  deep  enough  in  the  conscious  joy 
and  serenity  of  your  love  to  be  totally  indisposed  to 
go.  But  you  seem  not  to  have  reached  this  height. 
Go  then,  if  you  will,  but  understand  exactly  what  it 
signifies.  To  be  restrained,  or  kept  back,  by  mere 
scruple,  at  the  legal  point  of  morality,  will  do  you  no 
good.  And  if  I  should  raise  a  scruple  for  you  here, 
and  you  still  should  go,  it  would  only  put  you  in  a 
struggle  with  your  conscience,  and  set  you  on  contriv- 
ing moral  arguments  of  defense,  for  what  is  only  spir- 
itual defeat,  or  defection.  If  you  are  disposed  to  go, 
it  is  better  for  you  to  go  understanding  what  it  means, 
and  have  nothing  else  to  think  of." 

And  what  shall  we  say  of  the  many  christian  peo- 
ple so  called,  who  are  always  putting  the  question  of 
amusements  on  trial,  under  the  test  arguments  of  com- 
mon morality  ?     Where  is  the  harm,  they  ask,  of  this 
33* 


390  FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS, 

or  that  ?  Where  is  the  principle  ?  What  is  the  law 
that  condemns  it  ?  Is  it  not  better  in  these  innocent 
matters  to  be  free  ?  Yes,  and  is  it  not  better  yet  to 
be  more  free? — to  be  living  in  ranges  of  illumination 
so  clear  and  full,  and  in  holy  liberty  so  high,  that  no 
such  hankering  after  the  little  driblets  and  titillations 
of  pleasures  called  amusements,  will  be  felt  ?  God's 
true  saints  below,  even  like  the  saints  above,  should  be 
a  great  way  in  advance  of  any  such  unsaintly  kinds 
of  privilege. 

Others  again  who  do  not  mean  to  claim  any  such 
privilege,  as  for  themselves,  have  much  to  say  of  doing 
what  they  can  for  their  young  people,  and  the  green 
age  of  society,  in  preparing  festivities  and  pleasures, 
such  as  will  keep  off  the  impression  that  religion  is 
an  austere  matter,  having  only  frowns  to  bestow  on 
the  common  amenities  of  life.  But  no  such  impres- 
sion of  austerity  is  ever  given,  I  feel  bound  to  say, 
when  religion  is  so  lived  as  to  be  an  atmosphere  of  joy 
and  true  liberty.  Here  is  no  austerity,  or  the  look  of 
it,  but  there  is  a  glow,  an  ever-bright  content  and 
hopefnlness,  a  jubilant,  all-loving  sympathy,  which 
keeps  every  thing  fresh  and  sweet  as  the  morning. 
Of  course  there  should  be  gentle  unbendings,  and 
moderate  connivings  at  play,  such  as  will  suffice  to 
show  that  no  morbid,  self-restrictive,  legally  distem- 
pered conscientiousness  makes  a  bondage  of  duty. 
All  mere  niggard  scruples,  and  rigidities  of  scrupu- 
losity, must  be  evidently  far  away.  And  they  will,  in 
fact,  be  farther  away  from  all  christian  people,  living 


AND   TOO   FREE   TO   WANT  THEM.  391 

as  in  joy,  than  from  any  that  make  a  point  of  catering 
for  amusements,  when  living  in  evident  dearth  and 
dryness.  What  are  these  dry,  dreary  people  doing, 
some  will  ask,  but  contriving  how  to  moisten  a  little 
the  aridities  they  live  in  ? 

Besides,  we  need  not  be  greatly  concerned  lest  the 
green  age,  down  upon  the  plain  of  nature,  will  not 
find  as  many  festivities  and  ways  of  hilarity  as  are 
really  wanted,  even  if  christian  friends  should  not  be 
making  up  card-parties,  and  dancing-parties,  and  pri- 
vate theatricals  for  them.  Why,  there  is  no  trip-ham- 
mer beat,  that  keeps  up  a  louder  and  more  constant 
noise,  than  the  advertising  racket  of  our  newspapers  ; 
telling,  every  night  and  morning,  what  new  shows 
and  budgets  of  fun  are  ready  to  -fee  opened — circuses, 
rope-dances,  feats  of  magic,  troupes  of  colored  min- 
strelsy, menageries,  learned  birds  and  pigs,  automaton 
players,  gift-concerts,  operas,  public  balls,  theaters, 
anniversary  dinners,  and  I  know  not  what  beside. 
Our  very  brain  is  put  a-whirling,  if  we  try  to  just 
keep  track  of  the  diversions  promised.  Many  of 
these  things  are  innocent  enough  in  themselves,  some 
of  them  instructive,  but  we  have  altogether  too  much 
of  them.  And  too  much  of  innocent  amusement  is  not 
innocent,  but  even  morally  bad,  another  name  for  dis- 
sipation itself.  Hence  in  this  view  the  very  last  thing 
any  christian  person,  woman  or  man,  need  concern 
himself  about,  just  now,  is  the  contriving  of  diversions 
to  relieve  the  austerity  of  religion.  It  may  be  that 
we  sometimes  take  on  a  hard,  dry,  God-forsaken  look 


392  FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS, 

iii  the  religion  we  have ;  alas !  I  fear  it  is  true,  but  O 
if  we  had  more,  if  we  had  enough  to  live  in  it  and  by 
it,  there  would  be  no  so  glad  faces,  or  winning  graces 
of  life,  as  our  liberty  in  the  Spirit  would  show.  The 
very  atmosphere  of  such  is  fresh  and  bright  and  free 
as  the  day-dawn.  They  live  above  scruple,  they  do 
nothing  by  constraint,  they  go  beaming  where  they 
go.  Every  one  sees  that  they  have  the  deepest  satis- 
factions, and  are  most  completely  alive  of  all  people 
that  live.  They  will  bend  sometimes  to  indulgences, 
which  the  churlish  miscalled  saints,  living  under 
scruple  or  ascetic  law,  condemn,  but  it  will  be  evident 
that  they  rather  yield  to  them  in  amiable  deference  to 
others,  than  want  them  for  themselves.  Or  if  they 
do  it  now  and  then,  as  in  deference  to  their  own  nat- 
ural instinct  of  play,  it  will  seem  that  they  are  only 
freer  because  they  are  full,  and  not  that  they  are 
craving  such  allowance  because  they  are  empty.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  say,  that  they  will  not  be  averted, 
even  by  their  liberty  itself,  from  any  festivities  or 
games  that  are  athletic,  or  belong  to  the  gymnastics 
of  bodily  exercise.  They  are  human  and  have  human 
bodies ;  and  it  is  not  supposable  that  the  joys  of  the 
spirit  should  make  them  neglectful  of  the  joys  of 
health,  and  the  full-toned  vigor  of  the  body.  Even 
the  Spirit  of  the  Lord,  we  are  told,  does  not  withhold 
his  quickening  touch  from  mortal  bodies. 

But  must  we  not,  some  very  conscientious  disciples 
will  ask,  be  faithful  to  put  a  frown  upon  these  pleas- 
ures in   the   lower  plane  of  morality?  must  we  not 


AND   TOO    FREE   TO   WANT   THEM.  303 

declare  them  to  be  wrong  and  raise  a  testimony 
against  them  ?  That  is  about  the  worst  thing  a  true 
christian  can  do.  They  are  not  wrong  in  themselves. 
It  is  you  that  have  gone  above  them  and  their  law, 
not  they  that  have  come  up  into  conflict  with  you. 
The  opposition  between  you  and  them  is  without 
any  real  contrariety  of  principle  ;  you.  being  swayed 
by  religious  inspirations  and  they  by  rules  of  ethics 
legally  applied.  And  there  is  nothing  you  can  do 
against  religion  more  hurtful,  than  to  make  it  the 
foe  of  all  innocent  enjoyments,  in  the  reach  of  such 
as  have  not  the  higher  resources  of  religion. 

It  only  remains  to  notice  certain  interpellations  by 
which  one  or  another  will  think  our  conclusions  may 
be  turned.  Thus  it  will  be  suggested  by  some  who 
mean  to  be  disciples,  but  are  living  in  a  key  so 
low  as  to  be  over  fond  of  amusements,  that  the  class 
who  are  not  disposed  to  go  with  them,  must  be  chris- 
tians of  a  superlative  order,  such  as  all  who  are  to  be 
saved  need  not  of  course  be.  They  certainly  are  su- 
perlative in  the  comparison  suggested ;  but  whether 
they  are  better  christians  than  they  need  be,  or  than 
all  ought  to  be,  is  a  difficult  and  rather  delicate  ques- 
tion. Whoever  is  contriving,  by  how  little  faith  or 
how  little  grace,  and  with  how  large  interspersing  of 
gayeties  and  worldly  pleasure,  he  may  make  his  title 
to  salvation  good,  is  engaged  in  a  very  critical  experi- 
ment. He  is  trying  how  to  be  a  christian  without 
being  at  all  a  saintly  person ;  how  to  love  God  enough, 


394:  FREE   TO   AMUSEMENTS, 

without  loving  him  enough  to  be  taken  away  from  his 
lighter  pleasures ;  and  he  really  thinks  that  aiming  low 
enough  to  be  a  little  of  a  christian,  he  still  may  just 
hit  the  target  on  the  lower  edge.  Perhaps  he  will, 
but  is  he  sure  of  it  %  And  if  he  really  is,  what  miser- 
able economy  is  it  to  be  so  little  in  the  love  of  God 
and  the  joys  of  a  glorious  devotion,  that  he  can  be 
just  empty  enough  to  want  his  deficit  made  up  by 
amusements  ?  If  that  will  answer,  a  very  mean  soul, 
certainly,  can  be  saved. 

Another  class,  not  christian  and  never  pretending 
to  be,  are  out  upon  such  kind  of  people  as  get  to  be 
miserably  over-good,  and  can  not  take  the  fun  of  life 
as  it  comes.  They  do  not  want  such  christians.  It 
makes  them  angry  to  see  them,  set  aloof  by  what  they 
call  their  piety,  from  even  innocent  amusements  and 
pleasures.  "  If  any  thing  can  make  us  infidels  to  the 
end  of  the  chapter,  it  is  to  see  how  all  human  pleas- 
ures turn  sour  under  the  look  of  these  people."  Well, 
it  may  be  that  God  has  not  undertaken  to  make  people 
good  to  order,  after  your  particular  style,  and  whether 
your  style  or  his  is  better,  he  will  certainly  take  his 
own.  But  will  it  make  you  an  infidel  to  see  human 
beings,  naturally  just  as  fond  of  pleasure,  and  every 
way  as  selfish  as  you,  so  thoroughly  given  to  works  of 
mercy  and  sacrifice,  so  fascinated  by  God's  pure  chari- 
ties, so  deep  in  the  abysses  of  his  love,  that  they  have 
not  a  sigh,  or  a  want,  for  the  dear  gaieties  you  live  in  ? 
I  can  hardly  believe  it.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to 
me  that  such  a  fact  should  convince  you,  if  any  thing 


AND  TOO   FREE   TO   WANT  THEM.  395 

can,  that  what  has  so  wonderfully  exalted  them  will 
equally  exalt  yon.  Surely  it  must  needs  make  a  very 
great  difference  in  the  soul's  outlook  on  every  thing, 
whether  it  has  God  revealed  within,  or  is  living  with 
out  G-od.  Might  it  not  make  as  great  difference  in 
yours  %  Therefore  when  you  say  that  you  do  not  want 
such  christians,  might  not  all  your  impressions  be  dif- 
ferent, if  only  you  knew  what  they  so  perfectly  know, 
in  their  better  plane  of  life  ?  There  certainly  should 
not  be  any  thing  odious  in  a  life  whose  quality  is 
grounded  in  the  simple  love  of  God. 

Well,  it  comes  back  then,  after  all,  a  larger  number 
in  more  various  shades  of  character  will  say,  to  this  ; 
that  all  christian  people  are  restricted  and  put  under 
bonds  not  to  allow  themselves  any  liberties  of  amuse- 
ment. And  since  we  all  alike  are  put  in  obligation  to 
be  christian,  what  is  the  conclusion  we  arrive  at,  but 
that  we  are  all  under  the  same  restrictions,  shut  up  to 
all  the  austerities  of  religion  that  we  just  now  thought 
were  to  be  escaped  ?  That  is  no  fair  conclusion,  or  in 
fact  any  conclusion  at  all.  Doubtless  every  nominally 
christian  man  is  bound  to  be  thoroughly  christian. 
And  so  is  every  unbeliever,  every  really  unchristian 
man.  But  take  it  as  we  may,  our  being  bound  thus  uni- 
versally to  the  choice  of  Christ,  does  not  any  way  touch 
the  matter  of  the  amusements  ;  for  who  ever  comes 
to  Christ  as  a  disciple,  is  never  cut  off  from  these 
because  he  is  under  requirement  to  that  effect,  he  only 
drops  them  out  because  he  does  not  want  them,  and  is 
turned  away  from  them  by  his  new-born  liberty  itself. 


396  FREE    TO    AMUSEMENTS,    ETC. 

Here  then,  my  friends,  in  this  high  plane  of  royal 
liberty,  it  is  our  privilege  and  calling  to  live.  "World- 
ly minds,  minds  faintly  christian,  if  such  are  possible, 
can  hardly  imagine,  rushing  as  they  do  in  their  empti- 
ness after  all  kinds  of  pleasurable  diversion,  to  till  np 
the  void  of  their  feeling,  what  supreme  fullness  of  life 
is  here  vouchsafed  us.  They  even  look  askance  upon 
our  gospel,  as  if  it  were  proposing  to  shorten  their 
privilege,  and  cut  off  the  few  endurable  things  they  are 
able  to  find  in  the  world.  Unspeakable  delusion  ! — 
would,  that  they  could  see  it.  No,  my  friends.  The 
real  purpose  of  our  gospel  is  to  set  us  clear  of  all  re- 
strictions whatever  that  work  legally,  and  bring  us 
out  to  reign  with  God  in  God's  own  liberty.  It  says, 
"  all  things  are  .yours,"  and  permits  us  to  live  in  that 
broad  wealth  which  consists  in  universal  possession. 
Nothing  is  farther  off  and  deeper  down  below  it,  than 
that  we  are  now  to  be  set  in  scruple,  and  careful  de- 
bate, about  what  social  pleasures  and  diversions  are 
permitted,  and  what  forbidden  us.  Permitted  or  for- 
bidden, we  shall  not  want  them,  or  go  after  them, 
because  they  are  chaff  to  us  ;  and  we  only  let  our 
gospel  down  below  itself,  when  we  assume  that  any 
thing  can  be  settled  for  Christ  in  that  plane  of  argu- 
ment. We  have  meat  to  eat  which  is  better.  We 
sit  in  the  heavenly  places,  having  it  ever  as  our 
prime  distinction  there,  that  we  would  rather  suffer 
with  our  Master,  than  be  feasted  without  him,  and 
would  even  willingly  die  to  behold  his  face. 


XX. 

THE  MILITARY   DISCIPLINE. 


"  Thou  therefore  endure  hardness,  as  a  good  soldier  of  Jesua 
Christ.  No  man  that  warreth  entangleth  himself  with  the  affairs 
of  this  life,  that  he  may  please  him  who  hath  chosen  him  to  be 
a   soldier."— 2   Tim.  2:  3-4. 

The  Christian  life  is  often  illustrated,  as  here,  by 
some  comparison  or  figure  derived  from  military  life. 
Sometimes  the  comparison  is  general ;  as  when  the 
whole  struggle  is  called  a  warfare.  Sometimes  the 
particular  point  of  the  comparison  turns  on  the  mat- 
ter of  persistency ;  as  in  the  resisting  unto  blood. 
Sometimes  on  the  matter  of  courage  ;  as  when  the 
righteous  are  declared  to  wax  valiant  in  fight.  Some- 
times on  the  precision  of  stroke  and  parry  in  close 
combat  with  evil ;  as  when  one  fights  in  a  cavalry 
charge — not  uncertainly,  or  as  beating  the  air.  In  the 
passage  from  which  I  now  propose  to  speak,  the  point 
of  the  comparison  is  different — it  relates  to  the  strin- 
gent and  exact  discipline  of  the  military  service ;  the 
total  separation  of  the  soldier  from  his  own  private  af- 
fairs, and  the  absolute  subjection  of  his  body  and  life 
to  the  hardships  of  the  camp,  and  the  will  of  his  com- 
mander. 

34  (397) 


398  THE   MILITARY   DISCIPLINE. 

The  life  of  a  soldier  is  the  hardest,  roughest,  most 
exactly  restricted  life  to  which  a  human  being  is  ever 
subjected,  and  it  is  well  understood,  as  a  first  maxim 
of  military  science,  that  it  must  be  so.  It  makes  no 
difference,  therefore,  whether  it  be  a  volunteer  en- 
listment or  a  forced  levy ;  no  matter  whether  it  be 
the  army  of  a  free  state  or  of  a  despotism  ;  it  is  well 
understood  that  it  must,  in  either  case,  be  subjected 
to  the  same  stern  military  discipline. 

The  general-in-chief,  in  the  first  place,  must  have  no 
questions  of  his  own  about  the  policy  or  righteousness 
of  the  war.  He  belongs  to  the  state  just  as  the  can- 
non do,  and  he  must  go  exactly  where  he  is  sent,  to 
fight  the  war  prescribed.  His  subordinate  officers,  in 
all  grades,  must  be  as  implicitly  subject  to  him  as  he 
to  the  civil  power,  and  the  soldier  must  be  subject  to 
them  in  the  same  manner.  The  army  is,  in  fact,  to  be 
a  variously  compounded,  closely  compacted  machine, 
whose  wheels  and  limbs  of  motion  are  men — the 
bodies  and  minds  of  men.  They  are  to  move  with  an 
exactly  timed  and  exactly  measured  step,  all  as  one. 
They  are  to  be  wheeled  up  into  the  cannon's  mouth  of 
the  enemy,  just  as  they  are  wheeled  about  in  a  parade 
exercise,  having  no  more  question  of  danger,  or  of 
self-preservation,  than  if  they  were  made  of  the  same 
material  as  the  truck-machines  of  their  cannon. 
They  are  to  wade  through  swamps  and  rivers,  at  the 
word  of  command ;  to  sleep  on  the  ground,  if  need 
be,  without  shelter ;  to  live  on  the  coarsest,  saltest 
fare ;  and  when  it  is  required,  on  half  allowance  of 


THE   MILITARY   DISCIPLINE.  399 

that  ;  to  keep  their  sentry-walk  in  the  rain,  just  as  it 
is  set ;  or,  if  they  must,  to  stiffen  there  in  the  winter's 
cold,  sooner  than  leave  the  beat  assigned.  If  they 
have  a  home  and  children,  it  is  to  be  nothing,  as  lono; 
as  they  are  in  the  Held.  If  they  have  lands  that  want 
their  care  and  culture,  harvests  waiting  to  be  reaped, 
property  and  debts  that  require  their  attention,  these 
are  nothing — no  man  that  warreth  entangleth  himself 
with  the  affairs  of  this  life,  that  he  may  please  him 
that  hath  chosen  him  to  be  a  soldier.  If  his  superior 
in  command  is  tyrannical  and  harsh,  he  must  choke 
his  resentments  and  not  vent  his  impatience  in  words 
of  complaint ;  for  that  alone,  if  permitted,  would 
loosen  the  fiber  of  order  and  discipline.  When  a  vic- 
tory is  gained,  it  must  be  enough  that  his  leader  is  ap- 
plauded. Or  if  some  other  subordinate,  less  deserving 
than  himself,  is  commended  for  promotion,  he  must  take 
it  as  the  fortune  of  war  and  be  silent.  Nay  he  must 
even  have  a  certain  soldierly  pride  in  not  whimper- 
ing or  complaining  of  any  thing.  In  a  word,  he  must 
endure  hardness  as  a  good  soldier  ;  for  it  is  the  manner 
of  a  soldier  to  endure  every  thing,  bear  every  priva- 
tion, without  a  murmur  of  discontent ;  to  eat  what  is 
given  him,  march  when  the  surgeon  decides  that  he 
is  well,  whether  he  can  stand  or  not ;  melt  or  freeze, 
leave  his  body  on  the  plain,  or  give  it  to  fill  a  ditch 
before  the  enemy's  ramparts,  just  as  the  cause  or  word 
of  command  requires.  This  too,  neither  in  a  way  of 
dogged  self-compulsion,  nor  of  timid  and  slavish  sub- 
jection.    It  must  be  done  with  appetite  and  ardor ; 


400  THE    MILITARY   DISCIPLINE. 

for  the  true  ideal  of  the  military  discipline  is  not 
reached  or  realized,  and  the  army  is  not  set  in  the 
true  fighting  order,  till  what  is  called  an  esprit  de  corps 
is  formed,  such  that  individuals  forget  themselvTes  in 
the  spirit,  and  pride,  and  fire,  of  the  common  body 
and  their  common  cause.  It  is  to  be  as  if  the  cause 
were  beating  time  like  a  march,  in  their  hearts,  and 
the  tramp  that  measures  their  step,  were  but  empha- 
sizing the  common  purpose  of  assault  and  the  common 
confidence  of  victory.  In  this  army  spirit,  or  en- 
thusiasm, which  consummates  the  drill  and  discipline, 
every  thing  is  done  with  freedom,  because  the  individ- 
ual consciousness  is  burned  up,  so  to  speak,  in  the 
common  fire  of  the  camp,  or  campaign.  The  soldier 
cares  no  more  for  himself.  lie  lives  in  his  command- 
er, and  the  brave  monster  called  an  army,  that  his 
commander  has  organized.  Or  sometimes  it  will  be 
true  as  just  now  it  is  with  us,  that,  apart  from  any 
power  of  drill,  a  grand  enthusiasm  for  his  country 
and  its  laws  has  taken  possession  of  the  soldier,  and 
so  far  sunk  his  individuality,  that  he  throws  in  ease, 
and  home,  and  children,  and  life  itself,  caring  nothing 
for  the  sacrifice,  and  scarcely  remembering  his  par- 
ticular, infinitesimal  self  any  longer.  And  this,  in 
some  form,  is  the  condition  of  all  true  military  power. 
Having  lost  this  fire  of  the  camp,  the  army  is  said  to 
be  "  demoralized."  Having  never  found  it,  the  army 
will  be  only  as  an  army  of  sheep  going  to  the 
slaughter. 


THE    MILITARY   DISCIPLINE.  401 

Now  the  apostle,  as  we  have  seen,  conceives  the 
christian  calling  and  service,  under  the  analogies  of 
the  camp  and  a  military  soldierhood  ;  and  I  have 
drawn  out  this  brief  picture  of  the  military  order  and 
organization,  that  we  may  trace  the  lesson  he  gives 
us,  in  some  of  the  great  points  of  correspondence, 
where  the  analogies  are  most  instructive  and  im- 
pressive. 

It  is  not  conceived  of  course  that  the  christian  disci- 
ple, enrolled  in  his  Master's  service,  is  to  encounter  all 
the  bad  points  which  give  so  hard  a  look  to  military 
life.  He  perfectly  knows  that  he  is  not  thrust  forward 
in  a  bad  cause,  or  a  cause  of  which  he  has  any  the 
least  doubt.  He  knows  beforehand,  too,  that  his 
cause  is  sure  of  victory ;  not  perhaps  of  immediate 
victory,  not  of  any  such  victory  possibly  as  insures 
against  temporary  defeat,  and  even  long  ages  of  losing 
experience  and  discouraging  warfare.  Still  he  has 
this  one  point  given  him  to  fasten  his  courage,  which 
is  given,  never,  to  a  contesting  army;  viz.,  that  his 
cause  is  absolutely  sure  of  victory  at  the  last.  It  is  a 
great  point  also  of  distinction,  that  no  injustice  is 
going  to  be  done  him.  Nothing  will  ever  be  required 
of  him  that  violates  his  own  personal  convictions,  or 
breaks  down  the  integrity  of  his  judgments.  He  will 
suffer  wrong  by  no  fraud,  or  prejudice,  or  partiality, 
of  his  superior  commander,  but  will  be  estimated  al- 
ways exactly  according  to  his  own  soldierly  merit  and 
his  faithful  prowess  in  the  field.  His  fellow-men  or 
fellow -disciples  may  not  do  him  justice,  but  may  even 
34* 


402  THE    MILITARY   DISCIPLINE. 

put  dishonor  on  him  where  he  is  to  be  most  truly  hon- 
ored. Still  he  will  only  be  the  more  highly  estimated 
by  his  great  leader,  that  he  stands  fast  when  beset  by 
bo  much  of  hostility  and  detraction  around  him,  doing 
just  the  service  which  others  most  decry  and  hold  in 
least  esteem. 

Abating  now  so  many  points  of  wrong,  or  unright- 
eous severity  in  the  conditions  of  army  service — for 
God  has  never  any  unjust  or  over  severe  terms  to  lay 
upon  his  servants — there  is  yet  a  very  strongly  marked 
similarity  between  that  service  and  the  christian  dis- 
cipline. His  enrollment  for  such  discipline  includes 
the  totality  even  of  the  man.  He  is  to  keep  nothing 
back,  but  to  put  in  home,  house,  worldly  property  and 
business,  and  even  life  itself.  He  engages  to  endure 
hardness  as  a  good  soldier,  and  even  more  absolutely 
than  any  army  soldier  not  to  entangle  himself  with 
the  affairs  of  this  life.  He  takes  a  kind  of  militar}*- 
oath,  in  fact,  to  follow  his  Master,  and  do  his  perfect 
wTill ;  to  renounce  all  delicacy  and  self-indulgence,  to 
endure  privation,  to  not  shrink  from  distress  and  tor- 
ment, and  even  to  witness  a  true  confession  by  the 
martyr's  fires.  No  ties  of  kindred  or  country  are  to 
detain  him  from  going  where  he  is  sent,  or  doing  what 
he  is  commanded.  And  what  is  wholly  peculiar  to 
his  kind  of  warfare,  he  is  to  fight  alone,  when  called  to 
it,  and  maintain  his  charge  even  against  the  world. 
In  the  service  of  arms  soldiers  go  to  the  charge,  or  the 
contest  together,  under  one  or  generally  several  com- 
manders ;  but  the  soldier  of  Christ  stands  out  often  by 


THE   MILITARY   DISCIPLINE.  403 

himself,  in  solitary  warfare,  where  he  is  to  win  his  vic- 
tory for  God  and  truth  alone.  More  generally  he 
will  have  multitudes  enlisted  with  him,  and  the  great 
army  of  believers  will  be  set  in  the  drill  with  him  and 
he  with  them,  all  to  be  responsible,  in  a  degree,  for 
each  other.  They  are  all  to  have  their  appointed 
places  and  times,  and  come  into  the  close  fixed  order 
of  a  compact  system.  They  must  take  every  man  his 
part  under  the  great  leader,  throwing  nothing  over 
upon  others  which  is  given  them  to  do,  and  they  must 
take  the  peril  of  it  as  being  kindled  for  it,  in  the  glo- 
rious common  passion  of  the  common  cause.  Pa- 
tience, endurance,  courage,  fidelity  and  even  a  kind  of 
celestial  impassivity,  must  be  set  in  their  otherwise  in- 
constant, misgiving,  self-indulgent  nature.  And  the 
only  tonic  force  equal  to  this  must  be  found  in  devo- 
tion to  the  Master,  carried  to  the  pitch  of  soldierhood 
in  his  cause.  The  service  they  are  in  will  often  be 
hard,  a  drill  of  duty  and  observance  dreadfully  irk- 
some to  the  flesh,  but  as  soon  as  they  find  how  to  put 
every  thing  into  it,  and  have  gotten  all  their  thoughts, 
feelings,  fancies,  wishes,  enlisted  for  the  war,  and  all 
private  liberties  and  caprices  of  will  subjected  to  the 
camp  order  of  the  mind,  even  the  hardness  itself  will 
become  a  kind  of  buoyancy  and  celestial  aspiration. 

Now  this  representation  of  the  christian  life,  by  means 
of  the  military,  is  one  that  is  rich  in  spiritual  instruction, 
as  regards  a  great  many  points  of  principal  significance. 
Some  of  those  I  will  now  undertake  to  present. 


404  THE   MILITARY   DISCIPLINE. 

I  begin  with  the  particular  matter  suggested  by  the 
apostle;  viz.,  the  putting  off  or  excision  of  the  world, 
as  an  interruptive  and  disqualifying  power.  We  get 
weary  of  hearing  so  much  said  against  the  world, 
so  many  cautions  set  against  it,  so  many  renuncia- 
tions and  denunciations  piled  up  to  fence  it  away. 
"Why  such  a  fear,  a  jealousy  so  wearisome,  of  the 
world  ?  Is  it  a  bad  world  ?  Has  God  made  some 
mistake  in  the  constitution  of  it?  Is  there  not 
something  ascetic,  something  a  little  superstitious, 
and  to  speak  plainly,  something  a  little  unrespect- 
able  in  this  world-renouncing  way  ?  And  when 
we  insist  on  the  unworldly  character  of  all  true 
disciples,  and  hold  up  such  as  examples  of  a  spe- 
cially standard  character,  what  is  it,  they  ask, 
but  a  milksop  that  we  make  our  ideal  man  ? 
Do  we  then  put  this  same  judgment  down 
upon  the  soldier,  taken  away,  as  he  is,  from  all 
his  affairs  and  affections ;  his  property,  his  home, 
his  business  and  business-custom ;  forbidden  now  to 
use  a  finger  for  his  private  and  personal  interests, 
or  even  to  let  his  family  at  home  have  place 
enough  in  him,  to  so  much  as  slacken  his  feeling 
in  the  duties  of  the  camp  ?  But  why  is  this? 
why  is  he  allowed  no  more  to  have  any  world,  or  any 
thing  but  a  body  in  drill,  and  a  mind  set  for  endur- 
ance ?  Is  he  thus  unworlded  to  take  the  mettle  out  of 
him  ?  Does  it  in  fact  make  a  poltroon  of  him  or  mere 
broth  of  a  man,  as  we  just  now  heard  of  the  un- 
worldly Christian  ?      Does  not   every   military   com- 


THE   MILITARY  DISCIPLINE.  405 

mander  know  that,  letting  his  men  go  home  once  a 
month,  and  come  back  with  their  heads  full  of  family 
and  business  cares,  unmans  them  practically,  for  the 
time,  and  so  far  incapacitates  them  for  any  brave, 
tough-handed  service.  The  only  way  to  make  great 
soldiership,  as  he  well  understands,  is  to  take  his  men 
completely  out  of  the  home  world,  and  have  them  cir- 
cumscribed and  shut  in  by  drill,  as  being  mortgaged  in 
body  and  life  for  their  country.  Trained  to  flinch  at 
nothing  and  suffer  any  thing,  he  makes  them  first  im- 
passive, and  so,  brave.  And  under  this  same  law  it  is 
that  all  christian  disciples  are  required  to  strip  for  the 
war,  throwing  off  all  their  detentions,  all  the  seduc- 
tions of  business,  property,  pleasure  and  affection. 
All  such  matters  must  now  drop  into  secondary 
places,  for  the  understanding  is,  that  no  one  gets  the 
great  heart,  or  becomes  in  any  sense  a  hero,  till  his  very 
life  is  drunk  up  in  his  commander,  and  his  supreme 
care  to  please  him  that  hath  chosen  him  to  be  a  sol- 
dier. Instead  of  being  weakened  by  the  stern  renun- 
ciations of  his  unworldly  discipline,  it  is  precisely  this 
which  gives  him  all  robustness  and  heroic  fire  in  his 
calling.  In  just  this  drill  too  have  all  God's  might- 
iest witnesses  been  trained. 

Consider  next  how  the  military  discipline  raises 
spirit  and  high  impulse  by  a  training  under  authority, 
exact  and  absolute.  In  which  we  see,  that  going  by 
authority  and  being  always  kept  under  Christ's  posi- 
tive command,  is  not  a  way,  as  some  might  think,  of 
diminishing   our   personal   vigor,   and    reducing    our 


406  THE   MILITARY   DISCIPLINE. 

pitch  in  the  manly  parts  of  conduct.  Be  it  so  that  we 
have  it  put  upon  us  by  Christ,  as  the  perpetual  charge 
of  our  life,  to  keep  his  commandments.  And  then  let 
the  question  come,  how  we  are  going  to  preserve  any 
real  personality,  without  having,  in  some  large  degree, 
our  own  way  ?  Can  any  thing  save  us  from  a  total  in- 
capacity, when  we  are  required  to  be  acting,  moment 
by  moment,  under-  authority  ?  Does  it  then  reduce 
the  soldiers  and  all  the  subordinate  commanders  of  an 
army  to  mere  ciphers,  when  they  are  required  to 
march,  and  wheel,  and  lift  every  foot,  and  set  every 
muscle,  by  the  word  of  authority  ;  when  even  the 
music  is  commandment,  and  to  feed,  and  sleep,  and 
not  sleep  are  by  requirement?  Why,  the  service 
rightly  maintained  invigorates  every  manly  quality 
rather ;  for  they  are  in  a  great  cause,  moving  with 
great  emphasis,  having  thus  great  thoughts  ranging  in 
them  and,  it  may  be,  great  inspirations.  Not  many 
of  them  ever  had  as  great  before,  or  ever  will  have 
again.  And  all  these  powers  are  the  more  wholesome, 
that  they  come  in  as  commandment ;  for  it  is  one  of 
the  grandest  functional  superiorities  in  man,  that  he  can 
be  commanded  as  the  animals  can  not ;  that  his  nature 
is  not  a  block  but  a  drum,  reverberative,  grandly,  to 
whatever  highest  thing  is  sounded.  So  that,  after  all, 
and  say  what  we  will  of  our  own  personal  free  arbit- 
rament, the  grandest  things  that  ever  come  into  us  are 
commanded  in.  We  even  get  more  volume  by  what 
is  commanded  us,  than  by  all  that  we  do.  Authority, 
authority,  God's    all-dominant,  supreme  authority,  is 


THE    MILITARY    DISCIPLINE.  407 

our  noblest  educator  ;  for  more  than  all  things  else  it 
wakens  up  our  life,  and  impregnates  our  sentiment 
with  all  that  is  most  heroically  true  and  good.  Our 
human  nature  is  most  blest  and  exalted  in  its  hom- 
ages ;  and  no  soul  is  so  miserably  unblest  as  one  that 
never  had  any.  To  be  governed,  it  is  true,  is  some- 
times nothing  different  from  being  thrust  down,  but 
to  be  governed  for  a  cause,  or  an  idea,  is  to  be  graded 
up  in  pitch  and  not  down.  When  our  soldiers  return 
from  their  campaign,  how  often  is  it  remarked  of  one 
or  another,  that  his  good-for-nothingness  is  somehow 
taken  away,  and  that  his  very  gait  is  manlier  ;  as  if  he 
were  a  man  squared  up  by  command,  and  the  new-felt 
possibility  of  consequence  to  his  country.  And  so 
when  the  soldiers  of  Christ  throng  in  after  their  great 
campaign  is  over,  what  will  be  more  surely  discovered 
in  them,  than  their  everlasting  ennoblement  in 
Christ's  great  will  and  commandment.  And  yet 
not  that  so  much  by  what  he  commands,  as  by  the 
reverberative  sense  of  being  under  a  command  so 
high. 

Another  lesson  even  more  instructive.  How  often 
is  it  imagined,  by  outside  beholders,  or  felt  by  slack- 
minded,  self-indulgent  disciples,  that  the  military 
stringency  of  the  christian  life  is  a  condition  of  bond- 
age. The  disciple  puts  his  liberty  in  mortgage,  it  is 
thought,  and  is  never  any  more  to  be  free.  The  very 
conception  of  a  life  so  bitterly  scathed  and  cut  away 
by  self-renunciation,  is  wearisome,  ungenial,  and  re- 
pulsive— is  there  not  some  conception  of  a  good  life 


408  THE    MILITARY    DISCIPLINE. 

more  generous  in  the  style  of  it,  and  such  as  better 
accords  with  the  liberality  of  the  christian  salvation  ? 
Since  Christ  has  made  us  free,  why  not  stand  fast  in 
our  liberty  \  Yes,  but  how  are  we  going  to  stand  fast 
in  liberty,  when  liberty  itself  is  standing  fast  in  noth- 
ing, keeping  no  fixed  terms  at  all  ?  Why,  it  is  even 
the  chief  matter  of  the  military  drill  and  the  string- 
ent closeness  of  it,  that  by  no  other  means  can  the 
liberties  of  impulse  and  inspired  momentum  be  raised. 
The  cause  is  nothing  till  the  camp  begets  a  soul  for  it, 
and  the  camp  is  disciplined  for  that  end.  And  the 
understanding  is,  in  every  qualified  commander,  that 
he  never  gets  the  free,  great  spirit  into  his  men,  till  he 
gets  them  solidified  in  drill,  under  his  peremptory 
word.  He  must  train  their  every  motion,  if  possible, 
to  be  commanded  by  him.  And  if  at  any  time  the 
discipline  gets  relaxed  or  broken  down,  then  the  army, 
as  he  well  understands,  will  be  demoralized,  because 
no  common  impulse  takes  them  longer,  and  no  grand 
martial  fire  is  possible  to  be  kindled  in  their  inspira- 
tions. They  are  no  more  held  in  hand  closely  enough 
by  the  discipline,  to  put  them  in  impulse  and  the 
swing  of  liberty.  Their  cause,  however  good,  inspires 
them  no  longer.  Just  so  the  christian  body  is  pre- 
pared for  the  exaltations  of  liberty,  by  consenting, 
every  one,  to  the  exact  discipline  of  a  soldier.  Keep- 
ing the  walk  of  Christ,  as  he  would  the  beat  of  a  sen- 
tinel, obeying  under  mandate,  taking  the  rule  of  duty 
in  exact  observance,  inquiring  always  what  God  lays 
it  upon  him  to  do,  what  place  to  fill,  what  sacrifices  to 


THE    MILITARY    DISCIPLINE.  409 

make,  what  hardness  to  endure — coming  under  the 
yoke  thus  to  learn,  he  does  indeed  learn,  and  finds  it 
a  yoke  most  easy  ;  nay,  even  freedom  itself.  Just  ac- 
cordingly as  he  sinks  himself  in  the  steadiness  and  com- 
pleteness of  his  obedience,  he  mounts  into  liberty. 
Here  courage  springs,  and  all  the  free-born  senti- 
ments of  inspiration  break  into  play. 

This  matter  of  liberty  is,  alas !  how  little  under- 
stood, even  by  those  who  most  harangue  the  people 
and  the  political  assemblages  concerning  it.  Liberty  is 
not  the  being  let  alone,  or  allowed  to  have  every  thing 
our  own  way.  If  it  were,  the  wild  beasts  would  be 
more  advanced  in  it  than  all  states  and  peoples.  No, 
there  is  no  proper  liberty  but  under  rule,  and  in  the 
sense  of  rule.  It  holds  high  sisterhood  with  law,  nay 
it  is  twin-born  with  law  itself.  Even  our  existence 
droops  and  drags  a  chain,  if  it  can  not  touch  some 
principled  way  of  order,  to  be  ennobled  by  it.  There 
is,  in  fact,  no  bondage  so  dreadfully  sterile  as  vaga- 
bondage ;  that  which  strays  and  straggles  where  it 
will,  and  finds  no  hand  of  discipline  ever  laid  upon  it. 
It  is  in  a  slavery  most  dreadful  because  it  has  no  sig* 
nificance  to  itself.  Hence  it  is  that  the  strictness  and 
stiffness  of  the  army  discipline,  that  which  puts  the 
soldier  under  guard  because  he  does  not  set  his  eye  by 
command,  or  comes  on  parade  with  an  untied  shoe — 
hence  it  is,  I  say,  that  in  such  condensation  of  disci- 
pline, the  army  breaks  into  liberty,  rushing  even  upon 
death  itself.  It  does  not  grope  along  the  roads  and 
fences  vagabond-wise,  but  it  bounds  over  all  barriers  by 
35 


410  THE    MILITARY   DISCIPLINE. 

the  word  that  is  in  it ;  blazing  like  a  fire-tempest  in  the 
faces  of  the  enemy.  Self-consideration  is  gone  out, 
the  word  and  the  cause  are  all  that  is  left. 

This  is  liberty,  and  spiritual  liberty  is  close  akin. 
It  is  being  in  such  drill  under  Christ's  commandments, 
that  it  has  no  longer  any  thought  of  cost  or  conse- 
quences. It  goes  by  no  constraint  but  only  by  incli- 
nation, and  the  more  strictly  it  has  learned  to  obey, 
the  more  exactly,  tenderly  conscientious,  it  has  be- 
come ;  if  it  is  not  slavish  in  its  exactness,  but  is  caring 
only  to  please  him  that  hath  chosen  it  to  be  his  sol- 
dier, the  more  gloriously  free  it  will  be.  There  will  not 
be  a  galling  thing  in  the  service ;  even  the  self-denials, 
if  there  be  any,  will  be  free.  The  discipline  looks 
hard,  I  confess,  when  regarded  from  afar  and  exter- 
nally —  even  an  apostle  calls  it  enduring  hardness — 
and  yet  the  stringency  of  it  makes  it  the  spring  of 
liberty.  No  such  liberty,  no  real  liberty  at  all  of  the 
spirit,  could  be  made  by  any  smoother  and  more  re- 
laxed process.  There  is  a  kind  of  strictness,  I  grant, 
which  can  well  enough  be  pitied ;  viz.,  the  strictness 
of  cowardly  scruple  and  fear,  but  when  the  man  is 
full  up  with  his  law,  commanding  himself  in  it,  all 
such  expenditure  of  pity  may  be  saved.  That  man 
"  walks  at  liberty  because  he  keeps  God's  precepts," 
and  he  keeps  them  not  as  tugging  up  anxiously 
after  them,  but  as  a  military  body-guard  set  for 
their  defense.  Plainly  enough  there  is  no  bondage 
here. 

Let  us  also  take  another  lesson  from  the  military 


THE    MILITARY    DISCIPLINE.  411 

discipline,  finding  in  it  how  to  put  a  more  genial  look 
on  our  crosses  and  required  self-denials.  Ungenial 
and  repulsive  as  the  law  of  the  camp  may  be,  there  is 
no  such  thing  in  it  as  enduring  hardness  for  hardness' 
sake,  no  peremptory  commandment  for  command- 
ment's sake.  Such  kind  of  discipline  would  not  be 
training,  but  extirpation  rather.  And  yet  how  many 
of  us  christian  disciples  fall  into  notions  of  christian 
self-denial  that  include  exactly  this  mistake.  As  if  it 
were  a  proper  christian  thing  to  be  always  scoring, 
and  stripping,  and  mortifying  ourselves.  How  shall 
we  ever  be  true  soldiers,  if  we  do  not  make  a  hard 
time  of  it  ?  how  shall  we  resist  unto  blood  if  we  do  not 
make  a  fight,  and  press  hard  enough  to  bleed  in  it  ? 
Thus  how  many  who  really  wanted  to  be  soldiers  have 
retired  into  cells,  renouncing  family  comfort  and  love ; 
or  renouncing  marriage  ;  or  renouncing  shoes  ;  or  re- 
nouncing even  their  consciences — taking  spiritual  di- 
rectors, by  implicit  obedience  to  whose  ghastly  dicta- 
tions they  may  kill  out  even  their  private  will  and 
judgment,  and  all  deepest  convictions  even  of  their 
personality.  All  which  is  just  as  good  and  no  better 
than  the  discipline  of  an  army  kept  up,  not  to  make 
an  army,  but  to  unmake  the  men.  No  such  army  dis- 
cipline was  ever  heard  of.  Alas  that  we  should  have 
it  in  the  church,  and  that  not  merely  in  the  ascetic 
schools  of  the  monks,  but  in  a  presence  more  subtle 
and  scarcely  less  desolating  among  our  Protestant  peo- 
ples. What  is  self-denial  as  we  most  frequently  think 
it,  but  a  practice  of  self-deprivation  ?     And  then  hav- 


412  THE    MILITARY    DISCIPLINE. 

ing  made  our  mistake,  we  either  put  ourselves  to  it, 
making  life  a  desert,  and  calling  it  our  piety ;  or  we 
only  make  a  feint  of  compliance,  and  drop  into  a  piety 
more  stunted,  because  it  is  confessedly  wanting  in  the 
chief  thing.  It  is  very  much  as  if  the  soldier,  instead 
of  throwing  life  and  home,  and  every  thing  most 
dear,  upon  the  service  of  his  country,  were  put  to 
the  drill  for  stripping  them  away,  no  matter  for  the 
country.  That  would  be  rank  military  oppression, 
and  not  any  army  discipline  at  all.  Let  us  not 
think  much  of  the  christian  soldierhood,  endured  by 
the  poor  monks,  in  the  dismal  abnegations  of  their 
so  called  self-denial ;  as  little  of  their  groans  of  bond- 
age and  sorrow,  shut  in  by  the  walls,  where  as 
prisoners  of  God,  they  have  spent  their  weary  blight- 
ed lives  ;  but  let  us  find  instead  how  dear  and  free  a 
thing  self-sacrifice  may  be,  when  it  takes  away  our 
self-seekino;,  and  brings  us  out  in  a  life  of  uncalcu- 
lating  devotion  to  our  Master's  name  and  cause. 
The  truth  is,  my  friends,  that  our  human  nature  is 
made  to  go  a  great  deal  more  heroically  than  some 
of  us  think  ;  and  our  soldiers  in  the  field,  thank 
God,  are  just  now  making  the  discovery.  O  what 
worlds-full  of  great  feeling  are  given  us,  if  only  we 
can  die  into  the  causes  of  the  worlds  !  We  make 
the  soul  a  vastly  more  prosy  affair  than  it  is,  im- 
agining that  self-privation  will  starve  it  into  good- 
ness, and  penances  do  the  work  of  repentances. 
Why  if  the  fires  of  patriotic  impulse  can  help  our 
sons  and  fathers  in  the  field    to    rejoice    in    so  great 


THE    MILITARY    DISCIPLINE.  413 

sacrifice  for  their  country,  what  pain  can  there  be 
to  ns  in  our  painstakings,  what  loss  in  our  losses, 
when  the  love  of  God  and  of  his  Son  is  truly  kin- 
dled in  us  ? 

Let  us  also  note  for  another  lesson,  opposite  to 
this,  that  the  military  discipline  has  as  little  direct 
concern  to  beget  happiness,  as  it  has  to  compel  self- 
abnegation.  There  is  so  great  peace  and  sweetness 
of  enjoyment,  in  the  genuinely  christian  state  and 
calling,  that  such  as  are  highest  and  most  advanced 
in  it,  are  in  danger  of  being  too  much  occupied 
with  what  may  be  called  the  pious  luxury  of  their 
experience.  Probably  they  do  not  call  it  by  that 
name  themselves  ;  but  being  consciously  exalted 
above  measure  in  it,  they  conceive  their  joy  to  be 
itself  a  kind  of  self-certifying  oracle  and  witness  in 
their  hearts.  They  speak  of  it  often,  they  magnify 
it  over  abundantly  it  may  be,  and  fall  into  a  strain 
of  elysianizing ;  as  if  that  were  the  unquestionable 
test  of  the  highest  and  best  way  of  life.  Hence 
their  great  endeavor,  the  main  object  of  their  search, 
is  to  find  how  their  delicious  rhapsody  began,  and 
how  others  also  may  be  wafted  into  it.  If  we 
call  them  soldiers,  which  perhaps  they  are  in  a  sense, 
and  if  only  fit  occasion  were  given,  would  show 
themselves  to  be,  still  they  are,  so  far  and  just  now, 
soldiers  not  in  armor,  but  lying  on  some  sunny  bank, 
and  celebrating  there,  in  free  discourse,  the  pleasures, 
nay  the  peace,  of  their  warfare ;  also  in  free  chorals, 
the  fervors  and  inspiring  confidences  of  their  cause. 
35* 


414  THE   MILITARY   DISCIPLINE. 

Probably  they  have  it  not  in  thought,  just  now,  to 
be  enduring  hardness,  or  in  fact  that  they  are  under 
airy  call  of  soldierhood.  The  elysian  property  of 
their  feeling  is  just  now  their  principal  concern ; 
and  it  may  be  a  very  considerable  danger  of  their 
largely  blessed,  half  ecstatic  state,  that  they  will 
run  to  dissipation  in  it,  and  die  out  by  and  by,  into 
a  state  of  dryness  and  exhaustion  they  will  not  like 
to  confess.  It  is  never  altogether  safe  for  such  as 
we,  to  be  simply  happy,  and  that  may  be  the  rea- 
son Avhy  the  best  and  solidest  of  us  never  are.  See 
how  it  was  with  the  great  apostle,  "  fourteen  years 
ago."  He  was  caught  up  into  the  third  heaven, 
he  knew  not  whither,  and  scarcely  any  better  who 
he  was — in  the  body  or  out  of  the  body — thrilled 
of  course  with  unwonted,  unspeakable  delights  ;  but 
having  been  up  among  God's  roses,  he  came  back 
with  a  thorn  !  And  that  thorn,  as  we  can  see,  was 
the  life  of  him.  Without  it,  pervaded  all  through 
with  the  perfume  of  his  joy,  he  was  no  more  any  sol- 
dier at  all,  and  scarcely  a  man.  But  having  a  Satan 
to  buffet  him  inside  in  attacks  on  his  infirmities,  he 
began  to  glory  and  be  glad  in  a  more  sublime  fash- 
ion, having  now  the  power  of  Christ  resting  con- 
sciously on  him.  That  now  was  a  grandly  mortal 
style  of  joy ;  for  there  was  a  roughness  or  obstruct- 
ive element  in  it.  He  is  not  a  soldier  now,  sunning 
himself  at  his  ease  on  the  bank  of  the  river,  but  he 
is  in  his  fighting  trim,  girded  in  high  liberty  for  the 
onset  commanded.     We  must  not  think,  my  brethren, 


THE    MILITARY    DISCIPLINE.  415 

that  the  crown  or  decisive  test  of  our  experience  is 
that  we  are  happy — a  most  pleasant  thing  it  is  if 
we  are — but  as  certainly  as  our  fight  is  not  over, 
we  must  look  for  hardness  to  be  endured,  and  woe 
be  to  us  if  we  do  not  find  it. 

There  is  yet  one  point  of  this  military  analogy, 
where  in  fact  it  is  scarcely  any  proper  analogy  at 
all,  but  a  kind  of  universal  law,  running  through 
all  kinds  of  mortal  endeavor,  secular,  moral,  mental, 
and  spiritual ;  viz.,  that  whatever  we  get,  we  must 
somehow  fight  for  it.  "What  begins  in  the  conflicts 
of  tribes  and  empires  runs  down  through  all  kinds 
of  experience.  We  have  to  fight  the  soil  by  labor, 
and  conquer  from  it  our  bread.  We  get  knowledge 
and  mental  discipline,  by  a  long,  unflinching,  steady 
battle.  We  build  by  scoring  timber,  burning  clay, 
and  hewing  rock.  We  build  states  by  scoring  con- 
stitutions, baking  laws  in  the  fires  of  opinion,  and 
squaring  down  magistrates  for  their  places  by  the 
cutting  edges  of  our  votes.  And  so  we  go  fighting 
on  through  every  thing,  and  most  certainly  of  all, 
in  religion.  It  is  waging  war,  though  it  be  for  the 
Prince  of  Peace.  Fighting  a  good  fight,  is  the  only 
way  to  finish  the  course,  and  the  crown  of  glory 
comes  in  no  where,  save  at  the  end.  And  so  much 
impressed  with  this  fact  is  our  great  and  truly  most 
heroic  apostle,  that  he  occupies  a  good  part  of  one 
whole  chapter  in  naming  off  and,  as  it  were,  show- 
ing how  to  put  on,  the  whole  armor  of  God — gir- 
dle, breast-plate,  shoes,  shield,  helmet,  and  sword — 


416  THE    MILITARY    DISCIPLINE. 

and  he  even  conceives  that  Christ  is  our  captain 
leading  us  on.  Then  follows  another  apostle  who, 
making  his  appeal  to  seven  successively  named 
churches,  puts  them  to  their  task  each  one,  by  the 
promise,  so  many  times  repeated — "  To  him  that  over- 
cometh," — "  to  him  that  overcometh."  And  then 
passing  up  through,  into  worlds  above  the  world, 
he  beholds  the  victors  coming  in  with  palms  in 
their  hands,  and  these,  he  cries  aloud,  "  are  they 
which  come  out  of  great  tribulation  ;"  and  of  other 
victors  if  possible  more  highly  ennobled  — "  they 
loved  not  their  lives  unto  the  death."  And  so,  in 
one  view,  it  is  only  battle  we  are  waging  here  all 
the  time.  We  open  the  gate  of  the  kingdom  by 
great  throes  often,  such  as  make  us  bleed.  Our 
life  is  the  battle  in  the  cause  of  God,  and  God 
is  going  tinally  to  emerge  in  the  full  honors  of  his 
own  most  proper  and  glorious  title,  The  Loed  of 
Hosts. 

To  realize,  my  brethren,  a  conception  so  truly  sub- 
lime is,  I  fear,  not  possible  for  some  of  us,  living 
in  our  present  key.  We  are,  many  of  us,  living 
daintily,  I  fear,  and  half  theoretically.  We  have 
no  persecutions,  and  we  settle  into  very  dainty  notions 
and  habits.  There  is  a  want  of  rugged  vigor  and 
muscle  in  us.  The  ring  of  true  metal  is  wanting. 
To  please  him  that  hath  chosen  us  to  be  soldiers 
is  not  so  much  our  thought,  as  that  he  will  somehow 
find  a  way  to  please  us.  O  that  God  would  give 
us  back  once  more  some  heroes  in  godliness,  such  as 


THE    MILITARY    DISCIPLINE.  417 

lived  in  the  old  time  now  gone  by.  Or  better,  far 
better,  that  lie  would  gird  us  all  to  be  total,  and 
strong,  and  steadfast,  in  the  cause  of  our  Master — 
clear  every  one  of  entanglement;  sturdy,  and  stiff, 
and  simple,  and  right ;  refusing  all  the  softer  methods 
of  the  self-enjoying  luxury,  and  having  it  as  call- 
ing enough,  to  be  in  the  complete  war  discipline, 
as  well  as  the  complete  liberty,  of  eternal  obedience 
to  God. 

In  tracing  this  analogy  between  the  christian  and 
the  military  discipline,  I  have  not  said  any  thing 
of  a  matter  that  is  even  painful  to  be  named,  the 
case  and  question  of  desertion.  By  what  state  rea- 
sons and  conditions  of  absolute  necessity  it  is  put 
down  as  the  greatest  of  all  crimes,  and  punished 
with  inevitable  execution,  we  do  not  require  to  be  in- 
formed, and  the  heartrending  and  truly  shocking 
scenes  that  make  up  the  after-breakfast  horror  of 
the  camps  are  alas !  too  familiar.  The  parallel  I 
will  not  trace.  Are  the  religious  state-reasons  less 
decided  %  the  mischiefs  of  christian  desertion  less  dd 
moralizing  ?  the  grand  necessity  here  less  impera- 
tive ?  Fellow  soldiers  and  comrades,  I  can  not  look 
down  this  gulf ;  for  the  bottom  of  it  is  I  know  not 
where.  But  this  I  know ;  that,  if  you  do  not  deny 
Christ,  he  will  not  deny  you,  and  that  if  you  serve 
him  in  such  devotion  as  to  make  a  cheerful  and 
glad  service,  you  will  never  be  stolen  away  from  his 
cause,  by  any  most  seductive  bait  of  treason. 


XXI. 

THE   CORONATION  OF  THE  LAMB, 


"The  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb."— Rev.  22:  1. 

Regarding  here  the  mere  grammar  of  the  words, 
we  have  a  partnership  deity  presented.  Though  per- 
haps the  English  version,  speaking  not  of  the  throne 
of  God  and  the  Lamb  simply,  but  of  the  throne  of 
God  and  of  the  Lamb,  gives  a  more  plural  cast  to  the 
words  than  it  need.  However  this  may  be,  no  diffi- 
culty is  created  ;  for  since  person,  when  applied  as  in 
grammar  to  God,  is  only  a  finite  figure,  derived  from 
our  human  personality,  a  plurality  of  persons  may 
represent  him  as  truly  as  one,  and  perhaps  even  a 
great  deal  more  truly,  because  more  adequately.  It 
is  indeed  a  fault  of  any  single  name,  or  symbol  for 
God,  that  it  presents  him  too  easily,  in  a  too  definitely 
bounded  figure.  Nothing,  in  free  use,  will  save  his 
dimensions,  which  does  not  leave  us  to  behold  him  in 
a  maze,  by  that  to  be  magnified.  And  if  three  per- 
sons, or  more,  are  employed  to  create  the  maze,  we 
have  nothing  to  complain  of,  provided  both  the  dimen- 
eions  and  the  personality  are  practically  saved. 

But  the  matter  I  have  now  in  hand  is  not  the  plu- 
rality encountered,  but  the  name ;  to  do,  in  this  really 
(418) 


THE    CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB.  419 

supreme  article  of  the  gospel  story,  what  a  late  able 
writer  has  undertaken  for  the  Progress  of  Doctrine  in 
the  New  Testament — showing  how  a  lamb  becomes  the 
Lamb ;  a  very  humble  common  name,  the  highest  of  all 
proper  names ;  climbing  up  through  long  reaches  of  his- 
tory, into  the  throne  itself  of  God.  I  propose,  in  other 
words,  to  trace  the  ascending  progress,  issued  in  the  final 
coronation,  of  the  Lamb. 

The  ascending  stages  of  this  progress  we  shall  best 
discover  if  we  glance  at  the  scripture  record  of  the 
story.  The  word  lamb  begins  of  course  at  the  crea- 
ture, and  the  creature  required,  first  of  all,  to  be  cre- 
ated, having  just  the  qualities  of  innocence,  inoffen- 
siveness,  incapacity  of  resentment  and  ill-nature, 
ready  submissiveness  to  wrong,  necessary  to  the  in- 
tended meaning,  and  the  finally  sacred  uses,  of  the 
word.  Lambs  of  nature  were  first-stage  symbols,  for 
the  due  unfolding  of  the  Lamb  of  religion. 

Then  follows,  we  may  see,  a  process  in  which  arti- 
ficial meanings  are  woven  into  and  about  the  words 
and  images  provided,  by  the  religious  uses  of  sacrifice  ; 
for  God  is  now  to  be  displayed  in  the  dear  passivities 
of  sacrifice.  Thus  the  sinning  man — Abel  for  exam- 
ple— wants  a  liturgy  for  his  repentance,  one  that  shall 
both  move  and  express  the  tenderest  contritions,  the 
sweetest  hopes  and  confidences  of  reconciliation. 
Spontaneously  therefore,  as  some  think,  or  more  prob- 
ably by  a  special  appointment  of  God,  he  chooses  this 
most  passive,  most  unsinning,  unoffending   creature, 


420  THE    CO  HO  NATION   OF   THE   LAMB. 

and  says — "  Be  this  for  me,"  offering  it  in  fire,  as  the 
appeal  of  his  faith  and  his  prayer  of  reconciliation. 
Used  for  ages  in  this  manner,  the  lamb  becomes  a 
kind  of  sacred  image,  and  the  blood  of  the  lamb  an 
accepted  symbol  of  reconciliation,  or  forgiving  mercy. 

By  and  by,  after  man}'  centuries  have  passed,  Abra- 
ham is  put  on  acting  a  strange  scene  of  sacrifice  in 
the  offering  up  of  his  son  ;  wherein  he  is  to  be  carried 
through  incidents  and  a  story  and  a  struggle  of  loss, 
that  will  be  the  analagon,  or  type  of  another,  still 
more  mysterious  sacrifice,  where  God  provides  another, 
holier  lamb  himself.  And  the  story  ends  in  fact  in 
a  strange,  enigmatic,  yet  apparently  forehinting  utter- 
ance— "  God  will  provide  himself  a  lamb  "—words 
that  reached  farther  than  he  could  even  understand 
himself,  to  be  sometime  fulfilled  in  the  offering  of  the 
cross,  as  the  consummate  fact  of  sacrifice. 

Next  we  come  upon  another  more  advanced  stage 
in  the  process.  For  when  the  Lord  is  going  through 
Egypt  in  judgment  it  is  ordered,  for  the  comfort  of 
his  people,  that  the  blood  of  a  lamb,  now  become  a 
sacred  element  and  type  of  God's  all-sparing  mercy, 
shall  be  sprinkled  on  the  lintel  of  their  doors ;  behold- 
ing which  the  destroying  angel  shall  pass  by  and 
spare.  Hence  that  blood  of  the  lamb  is  called  the 
token  of  the  Lord's  passover.  And  so  the  passover 
observance  was  continued  for  ages  after,  till  it  sub- 
sided, as  being  evangelically  fulfilled  in  the  Lamb  of 
the  cross,  and  the  christian  supper.  And  the  Provi- 
dential correspondence  of  the  two  is  curiously  noted 


THE    CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB.  421 

in  the  fact,  that  as  no  bone  of  the  passover-larab  was 
allowed  to  be  broken,  so  the  cross  should  break  no 
bone  of  its  victim. 

Next  we  trace  another  stage  of  advance,  in  that 
strangest  and,  humanly  speaking,  most  unaccountable 
of  all  scriptures,  the  Messianic  picture  of  a  mighty 
suffering  some  one,  in  the  52d  and  53d  chapters  of 
Isaiah.  The  prophet  has  no  name  for  him,  breaking 
directly  into  his  picture  and  saying,  as  for  God — "  Be- 
hold my  servant,"  able  only  to  present  the  nameless 
great  one  by  his  own  wondrous  figure  itself.  If  he  is 
a  mortal,  there  was  never  any  such  mortal  conceived 
or  heard  of  before.  The  unbelieving  critics  have 
never  been  able  to  make  out  the  picture.  What  being 
is  he,  they  have  asked  in  vain,  who,  inverting  all  the 
ordinary  modes  of  judgment,  is  "  to  sprinkle  many 
nations,"  and  "  be  exalted  and  extolled  and  be  very 
high,"  and  "  see  his  seed  and  prolong  his  days ;"  be- 
cause he  is  "  brought  as  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter,"  and 
"  hath  poured  out  his  soul  unto  death  ;"  because  "  he 
has  made  intercession  for  the  transgressors ;"  because 
"  he  is  despised  and  rejected  of  men,"  "  wounded  for 
our  transgressions,  bruised  for  our  iniquities ;"  be- 
cause in  short  he  is  the  lamb  "  on  whom  God  has  laid 
the  iniquity  of  us  all?"  There  stands  the  picture  on 
the  page  of  prophecy — who  shall  ever  be  seen  to  an- 
swer it  ?  Centuries  come  and  go,  but  the  lamb  that 
is  to  be,  struggles  all  this  time  in  the  womb  of  Provi- 
dence— expected  and  not  seen,  yet  waiting  always  for 
the  birth. 
36 


422  THE    CORONATION   OF   THE   LAMB. 

At  last  the  fullness  of  time  is  come  ;  when  a  strange 
new  prophet  appears,  announcing  the  kingdom  of 
God  now  at  hand.  And  he  breaks  out  suddenly  at 
his  preaching  and  baptism  by  the  Jordan,  as  a  particu- 
lar unknown  man  is  seen  approaching  to  claim  the 
baptism,  in  the  strangely  worded  salutation — "Be- 
hold the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the 
world."  Now  at  last  the  advances  and  preparations 
of  so  many  ages  are  ended,  the  Lamb  of  God  is  come. 
Only  what  conceivable  impulse,  if  not  the  direct  im- 
pulse of  the  Spirit  of  God,  could  have  opened  the 
prophet's  mouth  in  this  strangely-worded  salutation  ? 
And  who  is  he  that  he  should  bear  this  appellation  ? 
That  will  be  known  some  three  years  hence  more  per- 
fectly. When  this  wonderful,  only  spotless  being  of 
the  world,  after  having  breathed  purity  and  love  on  it 
for  so  long  a  time,  goes  to  his  cross  in  dumb  submis- 
sion to  his  enemies,  and  dies  there  staining  the  fatal 
post  with  his  blood,  having  yet  no  bone  of  his  pass- 
over-body  broken,  we  begin  to  catch  some  first  inti- 
mation of  the  prophet's  meaning,  when  he  declares — 
"  he  is  brought  as  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter,"  also  of  the 
New  Testament  prophet  in  his  strange  salutation — 
"  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God."  And  then  what  does  he 
himself  do,  three  years  after,  when  he  encounters  the 
two  disciples  going  back,  heavy-hearted,  into  the  coun- 
try, but  open  to  them  all  the  ancient  scripture,  show- 
ing out  of  it  how  certainly  Christ  ought  to  suffer,  and 
so  to  be  the  Lamb  of  prophecy.  And  what  does  he 
give  them  to  see,  in  this  manner,  but  that  all  sacri- 


THE   CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB.  423 

fice  and  passover  are  now  fulfilled  forever  in  his  divine 
passion  ? 

Then,  passing  on  a  stage  farther,  we  are  completely 
certified  and  cleared  in  our  impressions,  by  the  discov- 
ery that,  at  this  same  Lamb  and  passover  blood,  all 
apostolic  preaching  begins.  God's  new  gospel  of  life 
is  the  revelation  of  the  Lamb.  For  this,  says  Philip 
to  the  eunuch,  is  the  prophet's  "  lamb  that  was  dumb 
before  his  shearers."  And  this,  says  Peter,  is  "  the 
precious  blood  of  Christ  as  of  a  lamb  without  blemish 
and  without  spot."  And  this  again  is  Paul's  "  propi- 
tiation," "  reconciliation,"  Christ  "  made  sin,"  to  bear  it 
clean  away,  and  in  fact  his  whole  book  of  Hebrews  beside. 

Then  once  more  the  progress  of  idea  and  doctrine 
that  has  been  advancing  stage  by  stage,  from  Abel's 
day  of  sacrifice  onward,  and  is  now  published,  far  and 
wide,  by  its  apostles  as  a  gospel  of  salvation  for  man- 
kind, culminates,  in  full  discovery,  at  its  true  last 
point,  in  the  scripture  book  that,  for  that  reason,  is 
called  the  Revelation  of  Jesus  Christ.  No  matter 
whether  these  openings  of  heaven  to  John  reveal 
scenes  of  worship  literally  transacted  there,  about  the 
throne,  or  only  visional  images  and  machineries  be- 
held above,  that  represent  so  many  chapters  of  future 
world-history  coming  to  pass  below  ;  no  matter 
whether  the  last  two  chapters  open  the  real  paradise 
of  God  above,  or  only  prefigure  a  regenerated  moral 
paradise  on  earth.  Still  in  all  these  visions,  whether 
read  in  one  way  or  the  other,  the  Lamb  of  God  is  seen 
to  be  now  in  the  ascendant,  receiving  his  divine  hon- 


424  THE   CORONATION    OF   THE   LAMB. 

ors,  surrounded  representatively  at  least,  and  so  far 
truly,  by  innumerable  hosts  offering  their  homage, 
wielding  also,  as  in  rule,  a  majestic  and  complete 
Providence  that  regulates  the  world's  affairs,  and 
makes  it  now  his  kingdom.  And  the  result  appears 
at  last  in  what  may  rightly  be  called  the  coronation 
of  the  Lamb.  Where,  emerging  from  his  subject, 
bleeding  state,  he  ascends  to  his  rightful  dominion, 
and  is  entered  into  his  glory.  He  now  is  God,  as  be- 
fore he  was  the  Lamb,  and  the  more  completely  God, 
that  he  is  God  more  gloriously  known  for  the  addition 
thus  made.  Three  times  over  in  a  very  short  space 
the  two  words  God  and  Lamb  occur  together,  as  if  to 
be  henceforth  forever  joined  in  like  ascriptions. 
First  no  other  temple  is  wanted,  "  for  the  Lord  God 
Almighty  and  the  Lamb  are  the  temple  thereof." 
Secondly  no  other  light  is  wanted  ;  for  "  the  glory  of 
God  lightens  it,  and  the  Lamb  is  the  light  thereof." 
And  last  of  all,  thirdly,  "  the  pure  river  of  the  water 
of  life,"  the  river  of  universal  healing,  is  seen  "  pro- 
ceeding out  of  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb." 
At  this  point  the  sublime  progression  of  the  Lamb  is 
ended,  for  it  can  go  no  farther. 

"VVe  behold  him  now  enthroned  everlastingly,  at  the 
summit  of  all  order,  majesty,  dominion,  truth  and 
worship ;  as  truly  God  as  God,  and  God  more  truly 
and  sufficiently  God,  that  his  image  is  complete  in  the 
glorious  addition  of  the  Lamb.  The  grand  acclaim 
and  coronation  hymn  is  lifted  by  multitudes  and  na- 
tions without  number,  and  by  the  angels  round  about 


THE   CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB.  425 

the  throne — ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand  and 
thousands  of  thousands — "  Worthy  is  the  Lamb  that 
was  slain."  And  the  word  goes  under  the  earth,  and, 
as  it  were  telegraphically,  under  the  sea,  filling  all 
masses  and  spaces  of  the  creation — "  Blessing,  and 
honor,  and  glory,  and  power,  be  unto  him  that  sitteth 
upon  the  throne,  and  unto  the  Lamb  forever  and 
ever." 

Of  course  it  will  not  be  understood  when  we  trace, 
in  this  manner,  the  stages  by  which  the  Lamb  ascends 
to  his  throne,  that  he  is  actually  promoted  to  another 
grade  of  being.  The  real  exaltation  is  to  be  in  us,  or 
in  the  raising  and  tilling  out  of  our  ideas.  For  the 
long-drawn,  visibly  predestinated  progress  we  trace  in 
the  outward  history,  is  a  progress  for  our  sake,  and 
not  a  progress  in  God.  And  the  object  of  it  is,  to 
help  our  ascent  towards  the  full  and  practically  true 
conception  of  God — God  as  he  has  been  forever,  and 
will  forever  be.  The  real  coronation,  after  all,  is  not 
complete  till  it  is  completed  in  us,  in  our  thought,  in 
our  advanced  apprehensions  of  God,  as  a  character 
centralized,  in  some  sense,  in  the  sensibilities  of  his 
lambhood.  This  advance  in  our  thought — this  new 
God-sense,  I  go  on  accordingly  to  show,  will  contain, 
especially,  these  three  very  important  factors. 

1.  The  received  impression  that  God  is  a  being  mor- 
ally passible ;  capable,  that  is,  of  a  suffering  propor- 
tionate to  his  goodness. 

2.  Also  that  his  nature  itself  is  relational  constitu- 
tionally to  both  sin  and  redemption. 

36* 


V. 


426     THE  CORONATION  OF  THE  LAMB. 

3.  That  he  is  most  powerful,  does  his  greatest  and 
most  difficult  things,  by  his  freeness  to  suffering. 

On  these  three  points,  I  conceive,  our  thought  is 
moving  and  to  move.  Taking  the  point  first  named, 
what  does  it  signify,  that  God  has  now  the  Lamb 
throned  with  him,  but  that  He  is  now  to  be  more  and 
more  distinctly  conceived  as  a  susceptible  being ;  to 
be  great,  not  as  being  absolute,  or  an  infinite  force, 
not  as  being  impassive — a  rock,  a  sea,  a  storm,  a  fire — 
but  as  having  great  sentiments,  sympathies  and  sensi- 
bilities. Nothing  has  been  Bo  difficult  for  men  as  to 
think  of  God  in  this  manner.  The  human  soul  is  over- 
borne, at  first  and  for  long  ages,  by  the  statural  di- 
mensions of  God  ;  filling  up  his  idea  with  mere  quan- 
tities ;  putting  omnipotence  in  the  foreground,  and 
making  him  a  grand  positivity  of  force  ;  adding  om- 
niscience, or  absolutely  intuitive  knowledge,  adding 
also  will,  purpose,  arbitrary  predestination,  supralap- 
sarian  decrees  ;  exalting  justice,  not  as  right  or  recti- 
tude, but  as  the  fearful  attribute  of  redress,  that  backs 
up  laws  regarded  mainly  as  rescripts  of  will  in  God, 
and  not  as  principles.  And  just  here,  in  fact,  is  the 
reason  why  the  Lambhood  nature  of  God  was  so  late 
to  be  revealed,  emerging,  as  it  were,  a  completed  fact, 
in  the  very  last  chapters  of  the  Revelation.  The 
dynamic  notions  of  God  had  covered  the  whole 
ground  of  his  attributes,  and  there  was  no  room,  no 
capacity  for  any  the  least  conception  of  him,  as  a 
being  able  to  endure  an  enemy,  and  suffer  even  bur- 


THE    CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB.  427 

dens  of  sorrow  for  his  sake.  So  calls  out  the  prophet 
in  his  wonderful  chapter  of  the  Messiah  Lamb  just  re- 
ferred to — "  Who  hath  believed  our  report,  and  to 
whom  is  the  arm  of  the  Lord  revealed  " — who,  that 
is,  in  this  coarse  age,  can  even  take  the  sense  of  my 
story  ?  Why  it  shows  a  tender  plant  wilting  in  a  dry 
ground.  There  is  no  high  look  in  him.  He  is  not  a 
green  bay-tree,  nor  a  fire,  nor  a  storm.  The  story 
comes  too  soon  for  us,  and  what  can  we  do  but  hide 
our  faces  from  him  ?  And  even  we  in  this  late  Anno 
Mundi  could  not  any  better  apprehend  the  matter  of 
God's  passibility  if  it  had  not  been  inwoven  or  inter- 
threaded  with  external  story,  by  the  suffering  Lamb. 
Slowly  and  very  gradually  the  sense  of  some  such 
thing  is  taken.  But  I  hardly  dare  guess  how  many 
centuries  longer  it  will  take,  for  even  our  theologians 
to  conceive  God  in  the  greatness  of  his  feeling,  and 
the  depth  of  his  sacrifice,  without  putting  forward 
trains  of  argument  that  begin  at  his  omnipotence,  and 
all-sufficient  absolutism,  and  the  gross-bulk  matter  of 
his  infinity.  He  has  always  been  at  work  to  mend 
this  defect  in  us  ;  protesting  by  his  prophets,  in  the 
matter  of  his  sensibilities,  that  he  is  "  hurt,"  "  of- 
fended," "  weary,"  "  was  grieved  forty  years,"  that 
"  in  the  affliction  of  his  people  he  was  afflicted,  and 
bear  and  carry  them  all  the  days  of  old."  All  this  in 
words  to  little  or  no  effect ;  but  now  he  shows  us  in 
the  Lamb,  as  the  crowning  fact  of  revelation,  that  he 
is  a  God  in  moral  sensibility — able  to  suffer  wrong, 
bear  enemies,  gentle  himself  to  violence,  reigning  thus 


428  THE    CORONATION    OF    THE    LAMB. 

in  what  is  none  the  less  a  kingdom,  that  it  is  the  king- 
dom and  patience  of  Jesus.  All  this  we  see,  as  dis- 
tinctly as  we  can  see  human  feeling  in  a  human  per- 
son ;  and  still  we  do  not  actually  see  it,  when  we 
look  on  it  with  our  eyes.  A  great  part  even  of  our 
christian  theologians  do  not  believe  that  God  is  an}/ 
way  passible  or  can  be.  Only  the  human  nature  suf- 
fers, they  argue,  that  alone  can  feel  the  touch  of  a  sor- 
row. Furthermore  if  God  is  passible,  what  is  left, 
they  ask,  of  his  greatness  ?  And  yet  moral  greatness, 
without  great  feeling,  great  moral  passibility,  is  even 
absurd  ;  for  a  morally  great  and  perfect  being  is,  by 
supposition,  a  being  in  great  sensibility  ;  the  more 
easily  wounded  because  of  his  sensibility.  And  what 
is  compassion  but  a  kind  of  passibility  ?  What  is 
long-suffering  but  a  way  of  suffering  ?  And  the 
loving  of  the  unlovely,  is  there  not  a  pain  struggling 
also  in  that  ?  Is  not  purity  quick  to  be  disgusted  ? 
tenderness  to  be  wounded  ?  righteousness  to  be  stirred 
with  displeasure  ?  Instead  therefore  of  being  set 
aloof  from  suffering  because  of  his  moral  greatness, 
God  is  in  a  liability  of  suffering  just  according  to  his 
greatness.  Physical  suffering  is  of  course  excluded 
by  the  fact  of  his  infinite  sufficiency,  but  that  is  a 
matter  quite  insignificant  for  him,  compared  with  his 
moral  suffering. 

Under  such  conceptions  of  God  we  of  course  ap- 
proach the  great  matter  of  atonement,  in  a  wholly  dif- 
ferent predisposition.  We  shall  look  for  something 
that  belongs  to  the  Lamb,  something  in  the  nature  of 


THE    CORONATION   OF   THE   LAMB.  429 

Buffering  patience,  and  sorrow.  If  he  prepares  a  new 
footing  of  forgiveness,  it  will  not  be  by  what  he  enters 
into  the  legal,  or  politically  legal  and  dynamic  factors 
of  government.  He  will  not  square  off  the  law  and 
level  up  the  dues  of  transgression  under  the  law — but 
he  will  simply  turn  a  crisis  in  feeling.  The  very 
problem  is,  in  great  part,  to  bring  out  the  everlasting 
Lamb  element  in  God's  nature,  so  that  he  may  be  the 
saving  power  of  a  new  worship.  A  God  who  is 
mainly  supreme  will,  or  absolute  force,  having  his 
greatness  largely  in  his  quantities,  will  really  have  no 
place  for  the  Lamb  as  integral  in  his  nature.  He  will 
therefore  be  conceived  chiefly  as  the  grand  avenger, 
standing  for  the  satisfaction  of  his  justice,  and  re- 
quiring to  have  it  taken  even  from  the  innocent,  if  it 
is  to  be  released  in  the  guilty.  If  he  is  to  forgive,  the 
law-score  must  be  made  up  in  the  same  manner,  and 
the  penal  dues  of  the  law  exactly  paid,  the  curse  of  it, 
without  a  peradventure,  suffered.  Which  forgiveness, 
pledged  and  praised  as  free,  is  really  no  forgiveness, 
but  is  only  a  release  passed  under  the  squaring-up 
principle,  and  simply  signifies  that  the  books  are  made 
even,  leaving  nothing  to  forgive.  No  such  freezing 
scheme  of  legality  appears  when  the  Lamb  is  con- 
ceived, as  from  within  God's  nature,  tenderly  bearing 
his  enemy,  and  so  making  good  the  proof  that  what- 
ever may  be  due  to  his  polity,  he  is  not  hampered  by 
it,  but  is  able  to  forgive  without  pay.  Even  as  I  for- 
give my  adversary  or  enemy,  when  I  can  make  cost 
for  him,  and  suffer  bitter  loss  for  his  sake — unable  to 


430  THE   CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB. 

perfectly  smooth  the  recoil  of  my  nature  from  his 
wrong,  and  make  clean  work  of  my  forgiveness,  save, 
as  by  such  cost  endured,  I  am  effectually  propitiated 
towards  him.  So  also  we  conceive  the  propitiation  of 
God  ;  for  the  Lamb  is  not  other  than  God,  outside  of 
God,  suffering  before  God,  but  he  is  with  God  most 
internally,  necessary  to  the  very  balance  of  his  per- 
fections, even  as  he  is  with  God  in  his  throne.  What 
we  call  grace,  forgiveness,  mercy,  is  not  something 
elaborated  after  God  is  God,  by  transactional  work  be- 
fore him,  but  it  is  what  belongs  to  his  inmost  nature 
set  forth  and  revealed  to  us  by  the  Lamb,  in  joint  su- 
premacy. 

We  come  now  to  the  second  point  above  stated,  as 
involved  in  the  coronation  of  the  Lamb ;  viz.,  the  con- 
viction to  be  more  and  more  distinctly  felt,  that  God's 
nature  itself  is  relational  to  both  sin  and  redemp- 
tion. Dealing  only  with  dynamic  factors  in  God's  na- 
ture, that  is  with  what  belongs  to  his  mere  stature 
and  capacity,  imposing  doubts  of  sin  are  crowded  on 
us.  God,  we  say,  being  omnipotent,  can  prevent  all 
sin  ;  since  then  he  does  not,  he  must  prefer  to  have  it 
— hence  our  convictions  of  blame  are  only  illusions. 
Sin  is  misdirection  therefore,  circumstance,  an  evil 
planted  in  the  seed,  that  is  going  to  be  good  in  the 
fruit.  But  our  God,  as  we  see  in  the  Lamb,  is  not  all 
force,  he  does  more  than  to  just  swing  the  hammer  of 
his  will  and  purpose ;  he  can  suffer,  he  can  bear  the 
contradictions  of  evil,  he  can  win  a  cause  by  triumph 


THE   CORONATION   OF   THE   LAMB.  431 

in  a  sorrow — conld  from  eternity  do  it.  For  there 
stands  in  the  throne  as  it  had  been  a  Lamb  slain  from 
the  foundation  of  the  world  ;  and  this  Lamb-creator 
could  create  in  self-sacrificing  patience,  just  as  he  re- 
deems in  the  same.  Thus  he  wanted,  for  love's  sake, 
moral  natures  about  him,  and  could  even  bear  any 
thing  to  bring  them  out  perfected  in  their  true  good 
and  glory.  Their  sin — for  sin  they  assuredly  would— 
would  hurt  him  all  through  ;  but  he  is  one  who,  for 
so  dear  an  object  can  bear  to  be  disgusted,  and  dis- 
pleased, and  burdened  with  sorrowing  concern. 
Therefore  sin  could  be,  and  we  do  it,  as  in  God's  warm 
bosom  that  can  so  far  let  us  sting  its  suffering  benigni- 
ties. It  is  not  the  run  of  causes,  not  bad-going  cir- 
cumstance, no  flour  of  the  gods  which  their  millstone 
of  necessity  grinds.  The  Lamb  could  suffer  it,  and 
for  it ;  therefore  it  could  be  and  is.  As  sin  is  relation- 
al to  the  Lamb  afterward,  so  the  Lamb  was  relational 
to  sin  beforehand.  We  are  not  going  therefore  to 
pitch  our  tent  and  stay  in  the  desert  of  the  All,  where 
nothing  answers  to  nothing,  save  as  one  kind  of  soph- 
ism answers  to  another,  but  we  shall  begin  to  have  it 
as  a  discovery  most  dear,  that  so  much  of  what  is 
greatest  in  God  is  relational  to  sin.  Instead  of  doubt- 
ing so  ingeniously  whether  sin  is  sin,  we  shall  even 
begin  to  look  upon  our  Lamb,  standing  in  the  world's 
throne,  with  his  scars  and  blood-stains  on  him,  and 
we  shall  find  a  grandly  philosophic  cheer  in  believing 
our  sin,  as  we  did  not  in  denying  it. 

Sometimes  we  begin   to  imagine  that  the  sense  of 


432  THE    CORONATION   OF   THE   LAMB. 

sin  is  likely,  as  tilings  are  just  now  going,  to  quite  die 
out.  Is"o,  the  Lamb  is  in  the  throne,  and  it  is  impossi- 
ble henceforth,  that  a  God  unrelational  to  sin,  or  a 
Fate  unbeneficently  relational,  should  ever  be  accepted 
by  the  settled  faith  of  the  world.  If  our  faith,  as  we 
have  it,  is  not  regularly  progressive,  the  same  is  true 
of  many  rivers  running  toward  the  sea  ;  they  run 
backward  in  long  circuits  often,  still  they  are  even 
running  towards  it  when  "running  away  from  it,  and 
are  sure  to  reach  it  at  last.  Let  us  have  no  concern 
for  this  matter.  We  shall  never  get  by  the  sense  of 
sin,  till  the  Lamb  in  the  throne  becomes  a  lost  idea. 
Simply  to  think  the  supreme  eminence  there  of  the 
Lamb  is  to  look  on  him  we  have  pierced,  and  see  him 
rising  higher  and  yet  higher,  age  upon  age,  and  feel 
the  arrows  that  were  hid  in  his  sorrows  growing  even 
more  pungently  sharp  in  our  guilty  sensibility.  All 
the  more  resistless  too  will  be  the  stabs  of  bad 
conviction,  that  they  are  meant  to  be  salutary, 
and  are  in  fact  the  surgery  of  a  faithful  healing 
power. 

We  are  also  shown  by  this  revelation  of  the  Lamb 
in  the  throne,  and  shall  more  and  more  distinctly  see, 
that  the  nature  of  God  is,  in  like  manner,  relational 
to  redemption.  The  two  points,  in  fact,  go  together 
and  are  verified  by  the  same  evidence.  But  while  sin 
is  not  any  work  of  God  or  of  the  Lamb,  we  are  con- 
tinually calling  Christ's  life  and  death  his  work,  or  his 
work  of  salvation.  And  we  often  put  such  operative 
force  into  the  language,   that   one  might  think  it  a 


THE   CORONATION   OF   THE   LAMB.  433 

wholly  perfunctory  matter  that  we  speak  of — an  under- 
taking or  enterprise  accomplished.  It  is  true,  I  admit, 
that  the  Scriptures  speak  of  Christ's  engagement  as  a 
work ;  he  also  himself  calls  it  his  work ;  but  it  is  only 
so  far  a  work  as  it  needs  must  be,  to  bring  out  a  char- 
acter and  a  feeling.  It  does  not  create  the  character 
or  the  feeling,  it  only  gives  them  to  us  as  they  were  in 
God  before.  He  opened  a  way  of  forgiveness,  as  we 
often  say,  but  the  opening  is  to  us  and  not  to  God. 
He  was  just  as  truly  a  forgiving  God  before.  That  is, 
it  was  in  him  and  always  before  had  been,  to  smooth 
out  his  heart  in  forgiveness  to  enemies,  by  making  cost 
for  them,  and  enduring  them  in  the  patience  of  sacri- 
fice. The  bleeding  Lamb  was  in  his  nature  before  he 
bled  on  Calvary.  His  very  being  and  character  were 
relational  to  redemption,  before  they  were  related  to 
our  redemption.  It  is  not  for  one  moment  to  be  im- 
agined that  Christ  the  Lamb  has  somehow  softened 
God  and  made  him  better.  He  came  down  from  God 
as  the  Lamb  that  was  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the 
world,  and  the  gospel  he  gave  us  is  called  the  ever- 
lasting gospel,  because  it  has  been  everlastingly  in 
God,  and  will  everlastingly  be.  It  does  not  simply 
mean  that  God  is  able,  and  always  had  been,  to  put 
himself  on  terms  of  benevolence  with  us.  He  is  on 
such  terms  originally,  with  all  beings  of  all  worlds, 
and  even  with  the  animals.  The  free  forgiveness  of 
sin  implies  a  great  deal  more  than  any  such  well-mean- 
ing disposition.  For  in  every  moral  nature  most  right- 
eous, and  partly  because  it  is  righteous,  there  is  a  cer- 
37 


434  THE   COEONATION   OF   THE   LAMB. 

tain  recoil  from  the  bad,  a  certain  moral  anger  that 
does  not  cease  because  he  says  the  word  "  forgive." 
Well-willing,  or  benevolence,  signifies  nothing  in  the 
matter  ;  there  must  be  sorrow,  suffering,  bleeding  en- 
dured ;  something  that  makes  cost  on  the  passive  side 
of  the  nature.  Then,  and  not  till  then,  the  true  for- 
giveness comes ;  a  blessed  and  clean  reconciliation, 
thinking  no  more  of  just  letting  the  culprit  go,  but  re- 
joicing in  the  fact  that  it  has  gained  a  brother.  And 
this  is  what  we  mean  when  we  speak  of  propitiation. 
We  mean  that  God's  nature  is  so  far  relational  to  re- 
demption, that  his  glorious  passibilities  are  bleeding 
always  into  the  bosom  of  evil.  There  is  a  fixed  ne- 
cessity of  blood,  and  he  has  the  everlasting  fountain 
of  it  in  his  Lambhood.  So  that  condemnation  for 
evil,  or  sin,  is  not  a  whit  more  sure  to  follow  than  for- 
giveness, sweetened  by  self-propitiation. 

It  was  proposed  to  show,  thirdly,  that  having  the 
Lamb  now  in  the  throne,  it  will  be  more  and  more 
clear  to  men's  thoughts  that  God's  most  difficult  and 
really  most  potent  acts  of  administration  are  from  the 
tenderly  enduring  capacity  of  his  goodness,  represent- 
ed by  the  Lamb.  The  richness  and  patience  of  his 
feeling  nature,  in  one  word  his  dispositions,  are  the 
all-dominating  powers  of  his  reign.  What  he  is  in 
the  Lamb — determines  what  he  is  and  does  univer- 
sally. 

Thus  if  you  look  in  upon  the  stock-powers  of  his 
mind  and  character,  you  will  be  very  soon  convinced 


THE   CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB.  435 

that  his  dispositions  are  the  first  matter  with  him,  just 
as  they  are  with  us.  From  them  every  thing  pro- 
ceeds. The  Lambhood  of  his  dispositions  will  subor- 
dinate every  other  function.  His  counsel,  wisdom, 
plans,  cosmical  order,  purpose,  will-force  and  creative 
fiat  begin  at  his  dispositions,  and  not  his  dispositions 
at  them  ;  for  what  could  they  do  in  preparing  disposi- 
tions that  by  supposition  are  not  ?  Always,  in  all 
rational  beings,  the  dispositions  are  first,  and  the  act- 
ings afterward.  The  Lambhood  nature  therefore  in 
God  dominates  all  other  nature  in  him  beside.  What 
we  have  been  calling  the  dynamic  factors  of  his 
being,  which  in  fact  the  philosophers  commonly  take 
to  be  the  whole  of  it,  are  only  purveyors  and  execu- 
tive servitors  to  the  dispositions.  And  all  they  do 
will  be  done  to  further  the  ends  and  fulfill  the  man- 
dates of  the  dispositions.  So  that,  looking  in  upon 
the  glorious  realm  of  attributes  and  powers  in  God's 
internal  armory,  we  may  not  scruple  to  say,  that  even 
there  the  Government  is  on  the  shoulder  of  the  Lamb. 
And  if  it  be  something  for  God  to  rule  the  world,  it 
can  not  be  less  for  the  Lamb  to  bear  like  sway  in  God. 
A  second  illustration  of  the  supreme  potency  of  the 
Lamb,  or  of  God  as  represented  by  his  painstaking 
love  and  sacrifice,  may  be  discovered  in  the  fact  that 
he  is  able  to  love  the  bad ;  that  is  to  love  directly 
across  moral  distinctions,  and  even  in  spite  of  all 
deserts  of  character.  He  can  love  the  cruel,  the  blas- 
phemers of  his  name,  the  mean,  the  filthy,  the  dis- 
gusting.    It  is  true  that  by  his  gracious  help  we  our- 


436  THE   CORONATION   OF  THE   LAMB. 

selves  can  be  raised  up  to  the  same  high  level  with 
him  in  this  prerogative  of  his  Lambhood.  But  it  is 
not  the  teaching  or  conceived  honor  of  the  world. 
Outside  of  the  gospel,  it  is  universally  assumed  that 
love  is  related  to  loveliness,  and  that  loveliness  is  the 
qualifying  base,  or  quickening  cause  of  love,  save  that 
in  what  is  called  natural  affection  the  love  is  purely 
instinctive  and  goes  by  necessity.  But  in  proper  vol- 
untary love,  what  man  or  teacher  of  morality  ever 
imagined  the  possibility  of  loving  the  bad,  and  even 
of  loving  them  into  love  and  the  goodness  of  a  new- 
born life  ?  And  is  there  any  greater  stretch  of  power 
conceivable  than  that  ?  Let  any  mightiest  soul 
of  mankind,  who  is  not  in  the  way  of  sacrifice  with 
Christ,  try  what  he  can  do  in  loving  the  bad  ? 

Observe  again  also  that  the  Lamb  assumes  to  go 
through  souls  with  a  lustral  and  transforming  power, 
from  his  passion.  Therefore  behold,  behold  the  Lamb 
of  God  that  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world.  He 
undertakes,  in  this  manner,  by  the  quickening  force 
of  his  cross,  to  beget  them,  as  it  were,  anew,  and  be 
the  new-creator  of  their  life.  All  this  by  the  depth 
of  his  feeling  and  the  sovereignty,  so  to  speak,  of  his 
sacrifice.  And  who  is  there  that,  without  him,  will 
undertake,  in  any  such  way,  to  new-character  the 
race,  or  even  a  single  man.  What  other  power  of 
gods  or  men  can  cope  with  such  a  problem  ?  Doubt- 
less a  man  may  be  managed  correctively,  in  a  way  of 
partial  improvement,  by  his  fellow  man,  but  to  be 
transformed  reo-enerativelv,   and  have  the    sin  taken 


THE    CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB.  437 

out  of  his  fiber,  who  will  do  that?  Yet  in  Christ 
is  a  godlike  or  rather  lamblike  sorrow,  tender  as  the 
dews  of  the  morning,  and  liquidly  vital  as  they ;  there 
is  a  bleeding  out  of  God's  own  sensibility  on  the  rock 
no  mortal  persuasions  could  melt,  which  is  his  inev- 
itably dissolving  baptism,  and  from  out  of  this  our  re- 
pentances run  clear,  even  as  the  brooks  run  out  from 
their  springs.  And  so,  with  a  meaning  how  deep,  how 
grandly  triumphant,  we  chant  our  confession — "  For 
the  blood  of  Christ  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin." 

And  again  it  is  a  singular  and  mightily  impressive 
demonstration  for  the  Lamb,  that  he  goes  into  causes, 
retributive  causes,  incorporated  in  the  system  of  na- 
ture itself,  and  turns  them  off  from  their  victims. 
The  grace  does  not  stop  at  nature,  as  if  here  was  a 
barrier  impassable,  but  it  undertakes  boldly,  instead, 
to  so  far  stop  even  the  wages  of  sin  itself.  But  it  does 
not  call  on  the  dynamic  forces  of  God  to  intervene, 
and  shake  off  by  a  fiat  the  retributive  laws  and 
causes  that  have  fastened  their  grapple  on  the  man, 
but  it  infuses  gently  into  him  or  into  his  faith,  that 
personal,  supernatural,  life-giving  spirit,  that  will  go 
through  his  disordered  members,  and  touch,  as  it 
were  solvently,  all  the  secret  bonds  and  propagative 
chains  of  causes  by  which  he  is  held,  and  is  otherwise 
so  to  be  holden  forever.  It  does  not  require  force  in 
such  a  case  to  break  the  chains  of  causes ;  any  drop  of 
the  blood  of  the  Lamb,  any  tenderest  touch,  that  is, 
of  God's  sorrowing  life  and  feeling  is  enough.  Why 
the  very  joints  of  the  rocks — did  they  not  burst  open 
37* 


438     THE  CORONATION  OF  THE  LAMB. 

when  the  blood  of  the  Lamb  fell  on  their  faces  ?  And 
whenever  that  Lamb-power  gets  entered  into  any 
bosom  of  transgression,  what  shall  we  see  but  that  all  the 
retributive  laws  of  all  the  worlds,  crowding  in,  can  no 
longer  hold  him  fast,  or  keep  him  back  from  his  liberty. 
We  make  another  very  wide  and  very  impressive 
stage  of  advance  in  our  apprehensions  of  the  essential 
supremacy  of  the  Lamb,  when  we  discover  that  our 
notions  of  the  governmental  order  of  the  world,  or 
what  we  call  Providence,  are  becoming,  and  will  here- 
after seem  to  be,  more  and  more  graciously  mitigated. 
Having  now  the  Lamb  in  the  throne,  we  are  to  have 
no  more  a  merely  punitive  and  dry  absolutism  ;  our 
Providence  will  be  a  true  Lamb-Providence.  I  mean 
by  this  a  complete  world-government  working  in  the 
interest,  fulfilling  the  counsel,  and  dispensing  even 
judgment,  in  the  feeling  of  the  Lamb.  We  shall  re- 
member his  word  when  he  went  up — "  All  power  is 
given  unto  me,  in  heaven  and  in  earth.  Go  ye  there- 
fore and  teach  all  nations,  and  lo,  I  am  with  you  al- 
ways." We  shall  not  look  to  see  him  bursting  out  in 
retribution  suddenly,  and  hurrying  on  his  judgments, 
as  many  in  their  feeble  panic  have  been  wont  to  do, 
but  making  gentle  suit  rather,  and  waiting  as  in 
pauses  of  sorrow.  He  will  set  all  things  civil  and  re- 
ligious working  together  for  his  great  kingdom's  sake, 
as  a  being  absolutely  one  in  all ;  purifying  churches, 
by  their  dissensions,  truths  defiled,  by  their  corruptions, 
principles  of  order  and  liberty,  by  great  conspiracies 
and  public  wars,  learning  and  science,  by  the  ravages 


THE   CORONATION   OF   THE    LAMB.  439 

they  muster  of  unbelief  and  presumption  ;  leading  in 
and  out  thus  the  successive  ages  of  history,  to  settle 
new  problems  and  winnow  clean  away  the  chaff  of 
society.  His  work  is  silent,  and  commonly  shows  no 
sign  ;  the  timepiece  runs  without  any  click  of  sound 
— but  yet  it  runs  !  And  when  some  great  world- 
crisis  comes,  in  earthquake,  or  storm,  or  fire,  we  know 
that  only  a  seal  of  the  everlasting,  seven-sealed  book 
of  Providence  is  going  now  to  be  opened  for  a  new 
chapter,  and  that  Christ  hath  prevailed  to  open  the 
book  himself.  And  we  hear  the  four-and-twenty 
elders  round  about  the  throne  crying — "  worthy  art 
thou  to  take  the  book  and  open  the  seals  thereof,  for 
thou  wast  slain,  and  hast  redeemed  us  to  God  by  thy 
blood."  It  is  only  redemption  now  that  carries  on  the 
counsel  of  Providence,  and  opens  the  seals  thereof. 
John's  book  of  Revelation  becomes,  in  this  manner,  a 
book  of  Providence  all  through,  celebrating,  as  the  cri- 
ses arrive,  all  the  overturnings  of  Christ's  advancing 
empire,  with  successive  hymns  and  acclamations ; 
chanting  everywhere  the  Lamb,  the  Lamb,  the  Lamb 
that  was  slain ;  sometimes,  when  public  wrong  is  incor- 
rigible and  fierce,  the  wrath,  and  always  the  victory, 
of  the  Lamb  ;  closing  off  at  the  river  that  proceedeth 
out  of  the  throne  of  God  and  the  Lamb ;  and  showing 
there  installed  and  everlastingly  established,  a  glorious 
and  complete  Lamb-Providence  for  the  world. 

Once  more  and  briefly,  I  must  carry  up  my  subject 
a  stage  higher,  and  show  you  the  world  of  the  glori- 
fied crystallizing  and  crystallized,  in  the  all-dominat- 


4-10  THE    CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB. 

ing  sway  of  the  Lamb.  The  everlasting,  universal 
kingdom  reigns  by  him — "  Of  whom  the  whole  family 
in  heaven  and  earth  is  named."  It  is  not  in  the  dy- 
namics of  God's  nature,  the  will,  the  counsel,  the  oper- 
ative work  and  purpose,  that  the  kingdom  is  organ- 
ized, save  as  these  are  first  organized  under  his  blessed 
dispositions  ;  we  nowise  give  the  true  account,  till  we 
say,  "  to  make  all  men  see  what  is  the  fellowship  of 
the  mystery,  which,  from  the  beginning  of  the  world, 
hath  been  hid  in  God,  who  created  all  things  by  Jesus 
Christ.1'  There  he  is  in  the  throne  where  he  fitly  be- 
longs— "  That  at  the  name  of  Jesus  every  knee  should 
bow — of  things  in  heaven,  and  things  in  earth,  and 
things  under  the  earth.  And  that  every  tongue 
should  confess  that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord  to  the  glory  of 
God  the  Father."  Therefore,  "  Blessing,  and  honor, 
and  glory,  and  power,  be  with  him  that  sitteth  upon 
the  throne,  and  unto  the  Lamb  forever  and  ever." 

There  comes  out  now,  my  friends,  in  the  closing  of 
this  great  subject,  a  question  which  I  have  not  so 
much  as  named,  though  it  has  all  along  been  urgently 
propounding  itself;  viz.,  what  of  the  deity  of  Christ  ? 
Is  he  the  Lamb  in  the  throne,  or  is  he  not  ?  And  if 
he  is  not,  what  of  Christianity  ?  For  one,  I  really  do 
not  know.  In  this  article  of  Lambhood,  and  the  cor- 
onation state  which  reveals  it,  I  behold  the  major  part 
and  supreme  glory  of  deity  ;  and  without  this  major 
part  I  really  do'  not  see  much  in  God  to  attract  me. 
I  do  not  very  much  want  a  God  whose  endowments 


THE    CORONATION    OF   THE    LAMB.  441 

and  quantities,  such  as  human  thought  and  philosophy 
muster,  are  the  principal  sum  of  his  nature.  But  I 
want  a  God  relational  to  my  sin  and  my  redemption, 
a  God  whose  sensibilities  and  self-renouncing  passibili- 
ties  are  the  containing  causes  of  his  dispositions,  and 
the  determining  causes,  in  that  manner,  of  his  charac- 
ter and  counsel.  Such  is  the  God  our  scriptures  offer 
us,  and  the  story  of  the  Lamb  ended  off  by  the 
crowning  of  the  Lamb,  is  really  the  dearest  and  grand- 
est of  all  the  divine  evidences ;  and  when  we  distin- 
guish this  most  tender  and  sufficiently  authorized 
pledge  of  forgiveness  in  the  throne,  where  God,  as 
being  the  Lamb,  hangs  out  his  flag  of  sorrow,  calling 
us  back,  we  shall  want,  I  think,  no  other  evidence  of 
his  deity  than  what  we  have  in  our  feeling. 


XXII. 

OUR   RELATIONS    TO    CHRIST    IN    THE   FUTURE 
LIFE. 


"  And  when  all  tliiuga  shall  be  subdued  unto  him,  then  shall  the 
Son  also  himself  be  subject  unto  him  that  put  all  things  under  him, 
that  God  may  be  all  in  all."— 1  Cor.  15  :  28. 

That  Christ  is  to  be  in  some  sense  eternal,  and  the 
eternal  joy  of  all  believers,  we  can  not  willingly 
doubt.  Or  if  any  one  may  turn  this  rather  singularly 
marked  passage  of  scripture,  in  a  way  to  make  it  sig- 
nify his  being  sometime  merged  in  God,  so  as  to  be  no 
longer  discoverable,  whether  in  his  person,  or  in  his 
kingdom,  we  may  easily  set  the  declaration  of  Christ 
himself  over  against  it — "  And  if  I  go  and  prepare  a 
place  for  you,  I  will  come  again  and  receive  you  unto 
myself,  that  where  I  am  there  ye  may  be  also."  A 
full  hundred  other  passages  equally  explicit  might  be 
added  from  the  gospels  and  the  epistles,  all  affirming 
it  as  a  principal  distinction  of  the  heavenly  felicity, 
that  Christ  is  eternally  present  in  it,  giving  recogni- 
tions of  his  friendship,  and  permitting  free  approach 
to  his  person.  A  very  great  part  of  them  indeed 
are  also  from  Paul,  and  it  is  nowise  probable  that 
what  he  says  in  one  is  to  contradict  and  overturn  all 
he  teaches  in  the  others.  There  is  no  way  then, 
as  we  may  see  at  a  glance,  but  to  seek  some  interme- 
(442) 


OUR   RELATIONS   TO   CHRIST,    ETC.  443 

diate  and  modified  construction  of  this  one  passage, 
that  will  accommodate  the  faith  declared  in  so  many 
others,  of  a  future  felicity,  constituted  by  the  presence 
of  Christ  with  and  among  his  people.  In  doing  which 
we  raise  the  very  important,  and,  to  all  right  living  in 
the  gospel  hope,  grandly  practical  question, — 

What  kind  of  piersonal  relation  to  Christ  we  are  to  hope 
for  and  hold,  as  our  authorized  and  fixed  expectation,  for 
the  future  life  ? 

I  confess  that  I  undertake  this  question  partly  for 
my  own  sake,  hoping  to  be  drawn  by  the  deliberate 
treatment  of  it,  towards  conceptions  more  satisfactory 
and  determinate.  And  if  it  should  happen  that  this 
is  the  last  sermon  I  am  permitted  to  give,  it  will  not 
be  amiss  that,  for  once,  I  have  preached  to  myself.  It 
maybe  too  that  others,  who  are  waiting  for  the  veil  to 
be  lifted,  want  the  same  kind  of  help  that  I  thus  con- 
fessedly seek  on  my  own  account. 

Among  those  who  hold  the  Trinity  more  lightly,  or 
in  a  more  nearly  Sabellian  way,  as  a  dramatizing  of 
God  to  serve  the  occasional  uses  of  redemption,  it  is 
common  to  assume  the  discontinuance  of  it,  when  the 
uses  of  redemption  no  longer  require  it.  Having  com- 
pleted the  subjugation  of  evil,  the  Son  is  now  to  be 
subject  himself,  that  God,  who  has  put  all  things  un- 
der him,  may  be  all  in  all.  God  is  thus  reduced  back 
to  his  complete  normal  unity.  Trinity  is  gone,  and 
the  absolute  One,  the  strictly  Unitarian  God,  has  the 
whole  field  to  himself. 


444  OUR   RELATIONS   TO    CHRIST 

But  there  is  a  fatal  want  of  depth  in  this  concep- 
tion. If  there  was  a  necessity  of  the  Three  to  carry 
on  the  redemption  of  the  world,  as  this  partly  Sabel- 
lian  view  supposes,  it  was  not  a  necessity  of  sin,  hut 
of  mind — finite  mind,  all  finite  mind  ;  existing  there- 
fore ab  ceterno  in  ceternum.  Besides  a  further  account 
of  the  matter  is  possible,  showing  that  God's  person- 
ality, and  also  his  practical  infinity  are  no  otherwise 
maintainable,  than  by  means  of  trinity.  An  imper- 
sonal God,  such  as  pantheism  offers,  is  a  merely  Infin- 
ite Tiling,  in  which  all  our  religious  instincts  are 
mocked  ;  finding  no  attribute  of  rationality,  or  love,  or 
moral  consciousness,  that  permits  dependence,  or  even 
the  sense  of  a  personal  relation.  We  must  therefore 
have,  we  say,  a  personal  God  ;  and  we  make  issue  for 
God  under  that  word.  lie  is  either  personal,  we  feel, 
or  else  he  is  naught. 

And  yet  God  is  not  a  person — we  are  obliged  to 
deny  what  we  affirm  in  the  word.  He  is  only  a  person 
in  the  sense  that  he  is  a  rock,  or  a  sun,  or  a  sea.  He 
is  not  a  literal  rock,  sun,  sea,  but  only  these  in  a  figure. 
So  he  is  no  literal  person,  but  an  infinite  substance, 
shadowed  to  our  feeling  in  such  qualities  as  belong  to 
person,  borrowing  this  finite  figure  from  ourselves.  If 
we  understand  ourselves,  we  only  mean  by  the  word, 
that  his  incomprehensible  nature  is  such  as  to  permit 
n s  a  practically  social  relation.  After  all,  his  person- 
ality is  best  affirmed,  only  when  he  is  represented  as 
three  persons.  For  if  we  call  him  one  person,  as  in 
the  supposed  better  philosophy  of  the  Unitarian  teach- 


IN   THE    FUTURE    LIFE.  445 

ing,  using  and  reiterating  always  that  finite  person- 
figure,  it  results  in  a  gradual  and  inevitable  sinking  of 
God's  magnitudes,  till  lie  falls  into  place  in  the  pro- 
nouns of  our  grammar,  as  being  virtually  one  of  our- 
selves— working  in  our  humanly  personal  methods  of 
conjecture,  computation,  inference,  reasoning  by 
words,  thinking  one  thought  after  another,  willing  in 
new  determinations.  We  try  to  save  ourselves  from 
this  collapse  in  idea,  by  adding  on  the  epithet  infinite, 
as  a  magnifier  ;  and  it  is  as  if  God  were  only  a  man 
written  large,  without  any  thing  added  for  enlarge- 
ment; for  if  we  call  him  an  infinite  person,  the  noun, 
person,  is  the  only  part  of  our  designation  that  has 
any  positive  meaning,  and  the  adjective,  infinite,  is 
merely  a  negative  of  boundary  that  indicates  our 
purpose  of  enlargement,  while  adding  nothing,  as  re- 
gards the  divine  quantities,  to  accomplish  it.  And  just 
here  we  discover  the  real  merit  and  value  of  trinity, 
in  that  it  saves  the  just  dimensions  of  God's  attributes, 
without  making  an  impersonal  platitude  of  his  infini- 
ty. As  the  grammatic  one  person  for  God  is  a  finite 
figure,  so  are  each  of  the  three.  They  are,  therefore, 
neither  one  nor  three,  a  completely  exact  notation  for 
God  ;  but  the  three,  when  taken  all  together,  do  com- 
pose a  large  approximation-,  the  best  that  human  lan- 
guage permits.  Set  in  personal  relativity  with  each 
other  and  with  us,  they  preserve  and  keep  always  in 
sight,  the  personal  quality,  or  function  ;  creating,  at 
the  same  time,  a  maze  for  the  mind,  by  the  indefinable 
cross-relations  of  three  persons,  such  as  practically  in- 
38 


446  OUR    RELATIONS   TO   CHRIST 

finite  the  conception  of  God's  nature ;  which  they  do 
by  raising  a  pitch  of  mystery  that  prevents  any  men- 
tal collapse  into  the  always  diminishing  effect  of  a 
single  person. 

"We  help  ourselves  in  the  conceiving  of  space  in  a 
way  strongly  analogous.  We  call  it  infinite  space,  well 
knowing  that  we  are  weak  on  the  adjective.  We 
then  take  up  three  lines  of  direction,  length,  breadth, 
and  height,  and  running  them  out  till  we  are  obliged 
to  stop — for  we  can  not  make  them  more  than  finite — 
we  give  them  as  our  notations  of  infinite  space.  And 
yet  the  lines  are  not  space  at  all,  they  are  only  instru- 
mentations by  which  we  conceive  it.  In  much  the 
same  way,  we  conceive  the  infinite  personality  of  God, 
by  three  persons,  all  grammatically  finite.  They  are 
instrumentations  inherently  necessary  to  all  finite 
mind,  and,  being  necessary,  God  can  never  be  thought 
of  in  any  world  without  them,  so  as  to  save  the  full  effect 
of  his  personality,  and  the  proximately  full  impression 
of  his  greatness.  They  are  just  as  necessary  for  the 
due  conceiving  of  God,  as  the  three  lines  were  just 
now  seen  to  be  for  the  conceiving  of  space. 

If  now  it  should  occur  to  some  one  that  our  trinity  is 
grounded  thus  in  ourselves — that  is  in  our  finite  want 
— and  belongs  in  no  sense  possibly  to  God  ;  and  if  it 
should  be  demanded,  since  three  finite  persons,  or 
images  of  such,  are  wanted  to  preserve  the  magnitudes 
of  God,  why  not  six,  or  sixty  ?  it  may  fairly  be  answered  ; 
first,  that  too  great  a  number  would  produce  distrac- 
tion, landing  us  in  all  the  vices  and  weaknesses  of  poly- 


IN  THE   FUTURE   LIFE.  447 

theism.  Probably  three  persons  come  about  as  near 
producing  distraction  as  it  may  be  advisable  to  go  ; 
creating  a  maze  that,  being  carried  farther,  might 
fatally  unsettle  the  composure  of  our  faith.  Six  lines 
of  direction,  or  sixty,  might  do  something  to  help  out 
our  conception  of  space,  but  the  three  just  named  will 
do  more.  But,  secondly  and  more  decisively,  it  may 
be  answered,  that  there  are  reasons,  or  distinctions  in 
God's  own  nature,  as  thought  by  us,  answering  exactly 
to  our  necessity  as  finite  beings,  which  fix  the  number 
three  to  be  the  number  of  the  persons.  Thus,  as  we 
just  now  found  three  lines  of  direction,  which  may  be 
called  the  categories  of  space,  so  there  are  three  prin- 
cipal categories  in  the  nature  of  God,  which  take  up 
or  contain,  as  far  as  finite  thought  is  concerned,  all 
that  he  is.  Thus  we  may  think  God  as  the  All-Fa- 
ther, the  Original  Base  or  Fontal  Source,  out  of  whom 
all  things  proceed  and  at  whom  all  beginnings  begin  ; 
also  as  the  Word  or  Expression  Principle,  the  All- 
Beautiful  and  ideally  Perfect  Form  of  God's  Intelli- 
gence and  Holiness — which  Word  is  Son,  as  being  the 
perpetually  born  image  of  the  Father,  when  he  thinks 
himself,  and  bodies  himself  to  us — also  as  the  Perva- 
sive Spirit  or  Going-Through  Principle,  by  which  God 
moves  and  sovereignly  Imbreathes  in  us  and  things — 
the  Everlasting  Waft  of  Deity.  So  we  have,  in  these 
three  categories,  the  composite  material  of  God  ex- 
haustively conceived,  as  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost. 
Nothing  more  can  be  added,  which  they  will  not  take 
in.     And  these  three  categories  we  represent  as  per- 


448  OUR   RELATIONS   TO    CHRIST 

sons.  \Vhich  three  are  persons  only  in  some  undefina- 
ble  way  that  puts  them  in  practical  relationship  with 
us.  They  do  not  move  transitionally  in  space.  They 
neither  forget  nor  remember  but  always  absolutely 
know.  They  have  no  new  thoughts  and  no  personal 
development.  They  do  not  plan  among  facts,  but  in 
the  everlasting  possibilities  back  of  facts.  And  yet 
they  are  so  related  to  our  moral  and  social  nature,  that 
we  can  be  sure  of  an  approach  and  an  experimental 
realization.  We  call  them  persons,  not  knowing  ex- 
actly what  we  affirm,  and  yet  none  the  less  confident 
that  we  are  affirming  what  is  somehow  related  to  our 
inmost  social  life.  Our  image  is  imperfect,  but  it  is  as 
good  as  the  grammar  of  human  speech  allows.  Or  if 
some  one  should  suggest  that  for  aught  that  appears 
our  personal  pronoun  they,  covering  confessedly  person- 
alities we  can  not  definitely  conceive,  but  can  only 
play  into  our  socially  religious  nature,  may  after  all  be 
only  neuter  plurals,  plurals  of  it,  such  as  grammar  en- 
dows with  imputed  personality  when  in  fact  they  have 
none,  it  must  be  enough  to  answer,  that  by  setting 
them, — the  persons — in  trinity,  as  one  that  is  three 
and  three  that  are  one,  we  affirm  a  cross -identity  and 
coalescence  that  is  not  possible  of  any  three  things 
and  can  be  only  of  persons.  And  in  this  view  it  is 
the  particular  merit  of  trinity,  and  is  forever  to  be, 
that,  as  finite  persons,  we  can  steadily  hold  the  person- 
ality of  God,  without  reducing  him  at  all  to  our  meas- 
ures;  as  we  certainly  should,  if  we  thought  him  al- 
ways as  a  single  person. 


IN   THE    FUTURE    LIFE.  449 

"We  have  now  a  great  first  point  established ;  viz., 
that  when  the  Son  is  spoken  of  as  finally  to  be  made 
subject,  or  so  far  discontinued  as  to  let  God  be  all  in 
all,  it  can  not  be  meant  that  the  Son  is  to  be  taken 
away,  or  disappear,  in  any  sense  that  modifies  at  all 
the  fact  of  trinity.  If  God  is  to  be  all  in  all,  it  must 
be  as  trinity  and  not  otherwise. 

In  adopting  this  conclusion  I  am  properly  required 
to  make  answer  to  an  objection  that  may  be 
raised  ;  viz.,  that  when  the  everlasting  need  and  fact 
of  trinity  are  thus  asserted,  there  ought  to  be  an  ap- 
pearance of  trinity  in  the  Old  Testament,  which  is  not 
there  affirmed.  Expositions  are  to  be  given  hereafter 
from  the  Old  Testament  for  a  different  purpose  that 
will  sufficiently  answer  this ;  I  need  only  observe 
therefore  here,  that  while  the  trinity  is  not  formulized 
in  the  Old  as  it  is  in  the  New  Testament,  the  material 
of  it  is  all  there,  as  visibly  as  if  it  were  set  forth  in  the 
ISTew  Testament  formula  itself.  Furthermore,  I  will 
first  add,  what  is  even  a  curiously  forward  evidence, 
that  Trinity  breaks,  in  fact,  on  discovery,  in  the  very 
first  chapter  of  Genesis  ;  and  that  too  in  a  way  the 
more  striking,  that  there  appears  to  be  no  thought  or 
intellectual  consciousness  of  the  fact.  Making  nothing 
of  the  fact  that  the  very  name  God  \_Ulolrim~]  is  plural, 
for  we  do  not  know  what  causes  back  of  the  word 
gave  it  the  plural  form,  we  have  first  the  Fontal  God, 
the  Father,  the  God  in  first  besfinnino-  "  creatine;  the 
heavens  and  the  earth."  Then  we  have  the  Move- 
ment or  Waft-Power,  the  Spirit  moving  "  upon  the 
38* 


450  OUR   RELATIONS   TO    CHRIST 

face  of  the  waters,"  to  beget  form  and  order  in  the 
formless.  And  finally,  coming  to  the  creation  of 
man,  we  have  a  deliberation  that  for  some  reason  in- 
dicates, in  figure,  at  least,  a  plural  consciousness,  say- 
ing, "  Let  us  make  man  in  our  image  and  likeness." 
In  which  words  "  image  and  likeness "  reference  is 
had  to  the  Everlasting  Son  who  is  the  God-Moral 
humanly  conceived,  the  image  and  type  of  all  God  is, 
in  his  possibilities  of  Beauty  and  Character.  Finding 
trinity  thus  in  the  very  first  chapter  of  Revelation,  we 
can  not  be  required  to  look  farther. 

Going  forward  then  into  the  future  life,  so  much  ap- 
pears to  be  determined  ;  that  we  shall  there  know  God 
unalterably  and  forever  as  trinity — Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Ghost.  The  Son  therefore,  as  discovered  in 
trinity,  is  of  course  never  to  be  merged,  or  passed  out 
of  sight,  or  in  such  a  sense  made  subject.  How  then 
shall  we  understand  the  apostle  when  he  testifies  that 
the  "  Son  "  shall  be  subject  or  retired  from  the  view  ? 
He  is  speaking  plainly  of  the  Son  as  incarnate,  or  ex- 
ternalized in  the  flesh,  visible  outwardly  in  the  man- 
form  and  known  as  the  Son  of  Mary.  He  it  is  that, 
after  having — as  a  king  outwardly  regnant, — put  all 
things  under  his  feet,  is  in  turn  to  become  subject  also 
himself,  that  God  may  be  all  in  all,  and  the  machin- 
eries hitherto  conspicuous  be  forever  taken  back  as 
before  the  advent. 

The  only  objection  I  perceive  to  this  construction  is, 
that  the  word  Son  here  appears  to  be  used  in  connec- 
tion with  the  word  Father — "  delivered  up  the  king- 


IN   THE    FUTURE    LIFE.  451 

dom  to  God  even  the  Father," — "  then  shall  the  Son 
also  " — as  if  it  were  intended  to  say  that  the  Son  as  in 
trinity  is  to  give  place  to  the  Father  as  in  trinity,  and 
he  to  be  henceforth  sole  deity.  But  there  is  a  two-fold 
relationship  of  Father  and  Son  appearing  and  reap- 
pearing constantly  ;  viz.,  that  of  the  Father  to  the 
incarnate  Son  and  that  of  the  Father  to  the  pre-incar- 
nate  Son  ;  that  which  gives  him  earthly  Fatherhood 
and  that  which  gives  him  celestial,  ante-mundane  Fa- 
therhood. The  apostle  was  not  careful  here  to  put  a 
guard  for  the  saving  of  the  eternal  Sonship,  because 
he  did  not  imagine  the  need  of  saving  that,  any  more 
than  of  saving  deity  itself.  He  was  only  thinking  of 
the  mortal  Sonship,  and  giving  us  to  see  the  essentially 
temporal  date  of  its  continuance. 

Trinity  then  as  he  conceives  will  remain,  but  the 
mortal  Sonship,  the  man,  will  disappear  and  be  no 
more  visible.  And  let  us  not  too  hastily  recoil  from 
this.  It  may  be  that  we  have  been  promising  our- 
selves a  felicity  in  the  future  world,  made  up  almost 
wholly  of  the  fact,  that  we  shall  be  with  Christ  in  his 
humanly  personal  form,  and  have  used  this  hope  to 
feed  our  longings,  quite  apart  from  all  higher  relations 
to  his  Eternal  Sonship.  There  are  multitudes  who 
mean  to  be,  and  really  think  they  are,  supereminently 
Christian  people,  whose  piety  is  but  a  kind  of  caressing 
of  themselves  before  Jesus  the  man,  or  a  canting  or 
caressing  repetition  they  practice  on  his  name.  Their 
word  is  Jesus,  always  Jesus,  never  the  Christ ;  and  if 
they  can  see  Jesus  in  the  world  to  come,  they  do  not 


452  OUR    RELATIONS   TO   CHRIST 

specially  look  for  any  thing  more.  Heaven  is  fully 
made  up,  to  their  low  type  of  expectation,  if  they  can 
but  apprehend  the  man  and  be  with  him.  Some- 
times it  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  the  piousness 
enjoyed  in  their  cantillation  of  the  name  Jesus  is 
really  idol  worship.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that 
in  such  a  use  of  the  ever  dear  name,  they  put  a  vir- 
tual fraud  on  the  gospel.  The  gospel  hangs,  for  all  its 
operative  value  and  spiritual  consequence  to  the 
world,  on  the  fact  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  man- 
form  used  as  vehicle  for  the  eternal  "Word  and  Lord. 
Religion  reaches  after  God,  and  God  is  Trinity,  and 
all  the  gospel  does,  or  can  do,  by  the  name  and  human 
person  of  Jesus,  is  to  bring  us  in  and  up  to  a  God, 
who  is  eternally  above  that  name. 

Our  relations  to  Christ,  then,  in  the  future  life,  are 
to  be  relations  to  God  in  Christ,  and  never  to  the 
Jesus  in  Christ.  They  center  in  the  triune  deity,  and 
specially  in  the  Eternal  "Word  or  Son,  who  is  repre- 
sented more  specially,  for  a  time,  in  the  person  of 
Jesus.  But  when  that  which  is  perfect  is  come,  that 
which  is  in  part  will  be  taken  away.  Christ  will  re- 
main, because  the  Eternal  Son  is  in  him,  but  the 
Jesus,  the  human  part,  will  be  made  subject,  or  taken 
away,  because  all  that  he  could  do  for  us  in  the  reve- 
lation of  God  is  done. 

There  is,  I  know,  a  much  less  questionable  concep- 
tion of  our  gospel  which  has  its  blessedness  in  Jesus, 
because  it  meets  God  in  him,  and  is  specially  drawn 
to  his  humanity,  because  it  even  finds  the  fullness  of 


IN   THE   FUTURE   LIFE.  453 

God  bowed  low  in  his  person.  This  so  far  is  genuine 
gospel.  And  it  would  not  be  strange,  if  a  disciple 
thus  wonted  in  God,  should  imagine  that  the  joy  of 
his  faith  is  conditioned  forever,  by  the  human  person 
at  whose  ministry  or  from  whose  love  it  began.  What 
then  is  the  future  glory,  he  will  ask,  if  it  does  not 
bring  him  in,  where  he  can  see  the  very  man  of  the 
cross  ?  '  All  my  expectation  stretches  hitherward,' 
he  may  say — fabulating  visit  and  vision  to  express  his 
grief —  '  I  cross  over  to  be  with  him,  I  press  in  eagerly 
to  behold  him,  but  I  can  not  find  him.  I  grope  along 
the  dusky  streets  of  gold,  asking  where  the  Son  of 
Man  is  to  be  seen,  and  they  tell  me  that  he  is  made 
subject,  and  is  no  more  to  be  visible.  Whereupon  I 
sit  down  baffled,  and  sick,  and  even  spilling  some  sad 
tears  on  the  pavement ;  groaning  inwardly  that  my 
heaven  turns  out  to  be  a  poor  illusion,  a  confidence  of 
beholding  the  man,  who  yet  in  fact  is  nowhere. 
Dreary  and  forever  dry  world  this,  where  the  chief 
among  ten  thousand,  he  in  whom  I  learned  to  seek  all 
good  and  find  all  dearest  peace,  is  gone  out  forever 
and  lost !'  Ah  !  but  you  shortly  catch  a  note  that  is 
music  indeed,  a  strain  that  has  been  a  long  time 
wonted  in  your  heart — '"Worthy -is  the  Lamb," — 
"The  Lamb  that  was  slain," — "for  thou  hast  re- 
deemed us  to  God  by  thy  blood."  And  who  is  this 
but  him  that  you  seek  ?  Surely  he  is  somehow  here, 
and  this  is  somehow  he.  You  missed  him,  perchance, 
because  you  were  looking  too  low  down,  out  of  the  range 
of  deity,  to  find  him ;  whereas  now  you  find  him  throned 


454  OUR   RELATIONS   TO    CHRIST 

in  God,  hymned  in  God,  as  the  everlasting  Son  of  the 
Father — and  jet  he  is  somehow  Son  of  Mary  still, 
even  as  he  is  the  Lamb  that  was  slain.  Whereupon, 
as  you  think  farther,  you  begin  to  see,  that  the  hu- 
manly mortal,  the  humble  and  poor  Christ,  dusted 
with  sore  foot-travel,  as  on  his  way  up  from  Galilee, 
is  in  fact  the  everlasting  Son,  as  in  Trinity,  and  took 
his  mortal  guise  only  for  a  day,  that  he  might  prove 
his  gentle  condescensions  and  draw  us  in  the  level  of 
brotherhood.  And  then,  ascending  to  the  Father  and 
the  glory  that  he  had  with  him  before  the  world  was, 
you  have  it  as  your  liberty  to  possess  him  still  as  char- 
actered in  his  mortality,  to  hail  him  as  the  Lamb,  or 
behold  him  as  the  mortal  brother,  and  see  in  fact  the 
whole  Christ-feeling  in  him,  such  as  he  was  to  you 
when  he  was  with  you  below. 

Our  conclusion  then  is  that  the  pre-incarnate  Son  of 
the  Father  is  the  incarnate  Son  of  Man ;  the  same 
that  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt  with  men,  bore  his 
mortal  poverty,  wept  his  mortal  tears,  and  died,  for 
men,  to  be  the  propitiation  for  their  sins.  Only  he  is 
now  made  subject ;  which  means  that  he  returns  into 
God  where  he  belongs  and  is  duly  glorified.  How 
else  should  it  be  with  him  ?  Of  course  he  would  not 
stay  incarnate  forever.  He  is  not  here  as  being  mort- 
gaged forever  to  humiliation.  He  came  into  his  mor- 
tal work  that  he  might  be  made  subject  when  his 
work  is  done  ;  which  being  made  subject  only  means 
that  he  is  entered  back  into  God  and  the  ascendancy 
that  belongs  to  Him  as  the  all  in  all.     And  lest  he 


IN   THE    FUTURE    LIFE.  455 

should  seem  in  this  reexaltation  to  be  lifted  quite 
above  us,  and  lest  we  should  seem  to  have  lost  the 
lowly  one  we  learned  to  love  so  tenderly,  and  now  re- 
member as  having  been  so  nearly  evened  with  him  in 
his  lot,  how  grandly  will  it  comfort  us  to  know  that  he 
is  now,  and  is  forever  to  be  just  what  he  was  histor- 
ically ;  that  as  he  was  the  Lamb  of  God,  so  now  he  is 
all  that  in  the  throne ;  that  as  being  in  the  form  of 
God  he  took  the  form  of  a  servant,  so  now  he  is  a 
servant  in  the  form  of  God ;  bowing  all  his  honors 
sweetly  clown  to  let  us  see  our  Christ  centered  ever- 
lastingly in  Trinity  itself.  Back  there  under  that  veil 
is  the  Son  of  Mary,  the  Child  of  her  Manger, 
the  Healer  that  came  about  on  foot,  and  slept  uncov- 
ered by  the  roads  and  on  the  mountains,  he  that  was 
bowed  to  suffering,  he  that  could  be  hated  and  die — 
all  this  he  is  above,  as  charactered  for  us  by  what  he 
was  here  below ;  nowise  exalted  above  it,  but  rather 
by  it,  forever.  Gone  by  as  the  Jesus,  also  as  the 
Christ  under  time,  he  is  yet  the  Eternal  Son  forever 
Christed  by  his  mortal  story  ;  so  that  we  behold  him 
eternized  as  our  Christ,  and  hear  him  saying  as  it 
were  out  of  his  humanity — "  I  am  Alpha  and  Omega, 
the  beginning  and  the  ending  which  is  and  which  was 
and  which  is  to  come."  It  is  as  if  the  Christ  we  loved 
were  visible  in  all  his  dear  humanities,  though  Trinity 
alone  is  left. 

At  this  point  we  reach  what  may  be  called  the  out- 
line conception  of  the  subject.     But  to  make  it  more 


456  OUR   RELATIONS   TO   CHRIST 

clear,  and  settle  the  relation  of  it  more  definitely  to 
certain  current  ideas,  I  undertake  to  controvert  and 
correct  our  current  ideas  in  two  particular  points, 
where  they  seem  to  obstruct  any  such  conception  of 
the  view  already  stated,  and  forbid  us  to  rest  in  it,  as 
one  of  the  finalities,  or  true  Last  Things. 

1.  We  have  it  as  a  commonly  accepted  article  of 
doctrine,  that  the  incarnate  person  includes  a  human 
soul,  and  by  this  human  soul,  contriving  what  is  to 
become  of  it,  all  our  perplexities  in  the  question  of 
our  future  relations  to  Christ  are  created.  That,  as 
being  incarnate,  he  has  ''  two  natures  and  one  per- 
son," is  agreed  by  us  all ;  but  when  we  come  to  an- 
alyze the  human-nature  part,  as  the  teachers  began  to 
do  some  centuries  later,  finding  it  composed  of  "  a  true 
body  and  a  reasonable  soul  " — that  is  of  a  proper  hu- 
man body  and  a  proper  human  soul  or  spirit — there  is 
more  room  for  doubt.  I  do  not  here  deny  that  there 
was  a  proper  man-soul  involved  in  the  incarnation,  or 
incarnate  person — I  carefully  abstain  from  doing  it — 
but  I  do  most  peremptorily  deny  that  any  one  can 
show  it.  Doubtless  there  are  inferences  enough  that 
may  be  drawn  to  make  it  a  most  logically  irrefragable 
conclusion.  Is  he  not  distinctly  called  a  man  many 
times  over  ?  and  what  is  a  man  without  a  soul  ?  He 
also  prays,  he  acquires  knowledge,  he  moves  about  in 
space  as  omnipresence  does  not,  he  suffers  and  by  suf- 
fering is  made  perfect,  and,  to  sum  up  all,  he  makes 
advances  mentally  in  the  ways  of  a  strictly  human  de- 
velopment— represented  therefore  as  growing  in  wis- 


IN   THE   FUTURE   LIFE.  457 

doin  and  character,  like  all  other  human  children — 
what  then  is  left  us  but  the  conclusion,  as  by  neces- 
sary logic,  that  he  had  a  proper  human  soul  included 
in  his  person  ?  Accordingly  we  have,  I  know  not  how 
many  sermons  showing  the  complete  humanity  from 
the  complete  and  distinctly  observable  human  develop- 
ment. The  argument  goes  to  the  mark  easily,  and 
we  really  suppose  that  every  thing  is  established. 
But  the  moment  we  cross  over  to  the  other  shore  the 
tables  are  turned,  and  we  find  that  about  the  toughest 
matter  we  have  there  on  hand  is,  to  find  where  the 
man-soul  of  Jesus  is  to  go,  and  what  is  to  become  of 
it.  We  began  before  we  crossed  over,  to  observe  that 
our  "  two  natures  and  one  person  "  had  been  running 
us  into  two  natures  making  two  persons,  and  we  also 
had  some  twinges  of  suspicion  that  our  very  exposi- 
tion of  the  development  assumed  the  fact,  not  of  a 
finite  human  nature  only,  but  of  a  finite  human  per- 
son to  be  thus  developed ;  for  a  mere  human  nature, 
observe,  included  under  the  "  one  person  "  of  the  first 
orthodoxy,  and  dominated  by  the  supreme  con- 
sciousness of  that  one  person,  will  signify  as  little  to 
itself,  as  any  floating  speck  does  in  the  tide-swing  of 
the  sea ;  and  then  what  liberty  is  there  as  a  condition 
of  development?  Accordingly  now,  in  its  second-life 
state,  this  man-soul  becomes  a  most  unreducible,  non- 
descript being  that  allows  no  classification. 

First,  that  the  eternal  Son  of  God,  having  his  place 
in  God  as  trinity,  is  to  be  duplicated  forever  in  a  Son- 
ship  out  of  trinity,    we  can  not  imagine  ;   for  what 
39 


458  OUR   RELATIONS   TO   CHRIST 

then  is  to  become  of  this  second  outside  Sonship  ? 
Next  we  can  not  more  easily  imagine  that,  as  being 
the  Eternal  Son,  he  has  taken  up  the  man-soul  of 
the  incarnation  to  be  forever  component  in  his  divine 
nature ;  for  in  that  case,  from  and  after  the  incarna- 
tion, God  would  be  a  different  substance,  a  conception 
wholly  inadmissible — no  such  codicil  to  the  divine 
nature  belongs  to  the  New  Testament.  What  then 
next  if  the  man-soul,  taken  up,  be  disengaged  from 
the  incarnate  person  and  become  a  proper  man,  a 
Jesus  visible  forever  by  himself?  If  so  there  is  cer- 
tainly no  very  special  felicity  to  come  of  being  with  him. 
After  all  we  have  said  of  his  development,  he  can 
have  no  specially  supereminent  character.  He  has 
lived  in  shadow  all  his  thirty  years,  under  the  all- 
swaying  will  of  the  one  superdominant  person.  He  has 
not  done  a  work,  or  thought  a  thought,  or  loved,  or 
willed,  or  suffered,  or  conquered  a  temptation,  on  his 
own  account,  in  the  right  of  his  own*  free  agency. 
Had  he  been  chloroformed  and  laid  by  these  thirty- 
three  years,  he  would  be  as  far  on  in  all  that  consti- 
tutes character. 

We  go  back  now  from  this  excursion  across  the 
river,  and  reexamine  our  argument  for  the  man-soul 
from  its  supposed  development.  And  here  we  dis- 
cover that  our  logical  inferences  were  all  at  fault,  in 
the  fact  that  the  incarnate  person  is  an  abnormal  per- 
son, and  for  aught  that  appears,  whoHy  out  of  range, 
for  any  sort  of  argument  we  are  master  of.  We 
might  as  well  reason  out  the  lire  of  the  burning  bush 


IN   THE   FUTURE    LIFE.  459 

by  the  inference  that  it  can  not  be  fire,  because  it  does 
not  burn  ;  or  the  wine  of  Cana  by  showing  that,  hav- 
ino-  come  out  of  the  water,  it  must  have  been  in  the 
water  before.  All  arguments  in  the  categories  of  the 
ordinary  are  but  idle  play,  when  applied  thus  to  the 
extraordinary.  The  facts  of  the  development  do  in- 
deed prove  development  in  some  sense ;  but  the  real 
question  still  is  left — whether  the  incarnate  Son  of 
God  himself  was  not  that  soul  or  nature  that  was  de- 
veloped %  That  he  became  the  germ,  the  born  infant, 
the  child,  the  boy,  the  youth,  the  man,  and  finally 
the  ascended  and  glorified  Son  of  the  Father,  pass- 
ing on  gradatim,  and  up  through,  taking  and  making 
all  the  history  himself  is  not  a  whit  more  difficult  than 
the  fact  of  incarnation  itself — infinite  in  finite.  And  do 
not  the  scriptures  very  nearly  assert  this  conception  ? 
As  when  they  declare — "  And  the  Word  was  made 
flesh,"  we  understand  them  to  say  that  the  Word  it- 
self became  the  ensouling  principle,  the  man  of  the 
incarnate  person.  So  when  Christ  calls-  himself  the 
bread  that  came  down  from  heaven,  adding — "  the 
bread  that  I  will  give  him  is  my  flesh,  which  I  will 
give  for  the  life  of  the  world,"  he  is  evidently  think- 
ing only  of  his  own  divinely  conscious  person,  and  the 
body  by  which  he  gets  connection  with  the  world. 
Nothing  is  farther  off  than  to  imagine  that  he  is 
thinking  here  of  a  man-soul  lurking  under  the  flesh 
that  is  not  it,  nor  himself.  Again  also,  when  the 
apostle  says — "  For  since  by  man  came  death,  by  man 
came  also  the  resurrection  of  the  dead  ;"  he  does  not 


460  OUR   RELATIONS  TO   CHRIST 

mean  of  course  that  a  certain  human  soul  or  nature 
in  Christ  raises  the  dead,  but  that  he  himself  in  his 
divine  order  and  life  does  it — he  is  the  man.  So 
again  when  he  says — "  For  as  by  one  man's  disobe- 
dience many  were  made  sinners,  so  by  the  obedience 
of  one,  [i.  e.,  one  man,]  many  were  made  righteous," 
he  has  no  thought  of  saying  that  the  obedience  of  the 
man-soul  person  was  able  to  impart  righteousness,  but 
only  that  the  incarnate  Lord  is  able,  as  being  himself 
the  man.  And  yet  again,  once  more,  he  tells  exactly 
who  this  man,  so  potently  working  is — "  the  second 
man  is  the  Lord  from  heaven."  In  which  he  comes 
as  near  saying  that  the  man  of  the  incarnate  person  is 
the  Lord  himself,  as  he  well  could.  All  these  declara 
tions  I  cite,  not  to  prove  that  there  is  no  human  sou) 
in  the  person  of  Christ,  but  to  show  how  little  ac 
countable  the  scriptures  are  for  the  common  assump 
tion  made  of  it.  It  is  an  incumbrance  that  we  reason 
out  for  ourselves,  by  inferences  from  facts  totally  ab- 
normal ;  an  elephant  that  we  capture,  and  after  that 
can  no  way  find  what  to  do  with  it. 

It  further  remains  to  say,  as  regards  the  particular 
matter  now  in  hand,  that  the  scriptures  give  us,  in  the 
positive,  conceptions  of  God  as  related  to  man,  and 
of  man  as  related  to  God,  such  as  very  nearly  su- 
persede all  these  difficulties  respecting  Christ  here- 
after, and  open  a  fair  possibility  of  being  practically 
with  him  as  subsisting  in  trinity.  Thus,  if  we  take 
what  is  said,  several  times  over,  of  our  being 
made  in  the  image  of   God,   and  of   Christ  being 


IN  THE   FUTURE   LIFE.  461 

incarnate  in  the  same,  an  inference  runs  backward, 
as  we  may  see,  that  God  is  in  our  image,  and  also  in 
Christ's  image,  and  Christ  and  we  in  the  same  image ; 
whence  also  it  follows  that,  before  creation  and  before 
incarnation,  God  himself  was  somehow,  or  in  some 
sense,  Man.  He  had,  that  is,  an  anthropoidal  nature, 
which  anthropoidal  nature  is  a  kind  of  Divine  Man- 
Form  or  Word,  by  which  he  thinks  himself,  incarnates 
himself,  and  types  himself  in  his  creations.  And  thus 
it  is  that  the  Jehovah  angel,  and  all  the  mysterious 
visitors  called  angels,  take  the  man-form  in  their  ap- 
pearing, whether  in  fact  physically  bodied  or  not. 
Thus  Daniel  saw  in  vision  a  celestial  Son  of  Man 
not  incarnate — "  behold  one  like  the  Son  of  Man 
came  with  the  clouds  of  heaven,  and  came  to  the  An- 
cient of  days,"  [the  Father]  and  had  given  him,  as  he 
came  near,  "  dominion  and  glory,  and  a  kingdom." 
Again  he  represents  Nebuchadnezzar  as  looking  down 
into  the  fiery  furnace,  where  he  had  cast  the  three  bold 
confessors,  and  crying  out  in  astonishment,  "  Lo,  I  see 
four  men  loose,  walking  in  the  midst  of  the  fire,  and 
the  form  of  the  fourth  is  like  the  Son  of  God."  And 
this  same  notion  of  the  Son  of  God  as  being  in  the 
form  of  God,  and  so  a  Man,  travels  down,  we  see, 
through  the  New  Testament — "  Who  being  in  the 
form  of  God,  thought  it  not  robbery  to  be  equal  with 
God.  But  made  himself  of  no  reputation,  and  took 
upon  him  the  form  of  a  servant,  and  was  made  in  the 
likeness  of  men." 

Now  in  this  brief  retrospect  of  the  scripture  ideas 
39* 


462  OUR   RELATIONS   TO    CHRIST 

and  methods,  we  discover,  as  plainly  as  need  be,  that 
when  the  Son  was  to  be  incarnate,  it  was  not  neces- 
sary for  him  to  take  up  a  tiny  man-soul,  not  before  ex- 
isting, always  to  be  unused  and  without  character  of 
its  own — humanity  was  in  the  type  of  his  own  ever- 
lasting person  before.  He  must  needs  begin  his  in- 
carnation at  the  germ  state  of  our  nature ;  for  he 
could  not  otherwise  be  incarnate  as  in  history ;  he 
would  only  break  in  casually,  as  an  apparition  or 
epiphany,  to  break  out  again  when  he  pleases  and  be 
gone.  But  he  wanted  to  be  integral  in  the  race,  and 
live  himself  into  record  with  us,  even  as  Aristides, 
or  Socrates,  or  Antoninus.  So  he  took  the  germ-life 
and  its  tiny  possibilities  just  as  all  men  do,  and  in 
that  life,  as  if  limited  in  a  sense  by  age,  and  size,  and 
experience,  he  expected  to  grow,  or  unfold  gradatim 
into  all  the  stages  of  wisdom,  and  power,  and  pro- 
gressive manhood.  "  For  though  he  were  a  Son  [Son  of 
God]  yet  learned  he  obedience  by  the  things  which 
he  suffered,  and  being  made  perfect — graduated  into 
full  divinity — he  became  the  author  of  eternal  salva  • 
tion  unto  all  them  that  obey  him."  We  are  not  inside 
of  this  development,  we  can  not  reason  it,  or  imagine 
it,  for  it  is  abnormal.  We  only  conceive  that  the  Son  of 
God  himself  is  the  subject  of  it,  and  that  we  have  no 
more  reason  to  suppose  a  man-soul  joined  with  him  in 
it,  and  possibly  eternized  in  him  after  he  has  passed 
the  grade  of  a  man's  development,  than  we  have  to 
suppose  the  germ-life,  the  infancy,  the  child,  the  boy, 


IN   THE   FUTURE   LIFE.  4G3 

the  young  man  eternized,  when  the  advances  made 
in  years  leave  them  behind. 

Our  being  then  with  Christ  in  the  future  life,  begins 
at  being  with  the  Son  of  God  in  trinity.  Nay  it  botli 
begins  and  ends  with  that ;  for  if,  in  our  miseducated 
ways  of  thought,  we  seem  about  to  miss,  in  that  man- 
ner, being  at  all  with  the  personal  manhood,  in  whose 
conscious  friendship  it  was  our  hope  to  be  joined,  we 
discover  the  Man,  even  the  God-Man  everlastingly 
present,  integrally  present,  in  trinity  before  either  we 
or  the  world  began  to  be.  Furthermore  we  may  also 
discover  that  the  matter  which  most  distinguishes  the 
fact  of  his  reascension  to  the  Father,  is  not  that  he 
is  gone  up  as  a  human-nature  soul  to  be  glorified,  and 
to  set  us  in  the  faith  of  an  everlasting  companionship 
with  him,  but  that  being  himself  the  Eternal  Man 
brought  low,  he  has  gone  up  to  be  glorified  again,  as 
he  prayed  himself— "  And  now,  O  Father,  glorify 
thou  me,  with  thine  oivn  self,  with  the  glory  that  I  had 
with  thee  before  the  world  was."  And  what  hope  can 
be  as  inspiring  and  reassuring  to  us  as  that  Christ  hai* 
gone  up  thus  to  be  the  Son  of  God,  and  has  lost 
nothing,  left  nothing  behind,  because  of  his  humilia- 
tions. We  must  not  ask  to  have  the  story  end  off  in. 
dejection,  and  to  see  the  man  sit  weeping  still  and 
forever  in  his  sorrows.  We  want  exactly  what  is 
given  us  to  see,  the  due  enthronement  of  his  sacrifice, 
showing  him  exalted  forever  to  the  throne  of  God 
and  of  the  Lamb.  Only  in  that  word  Lamb,  regal  as 
it  is  now  become,  there  is  a  flavor  of  tenderness  and 


464  OUR   RELATIONS   TO   CHRIST 

loving  patience  that  gathers  np  all  the  memories 
of  the  cross,  and  flavors  by  them  even  the  divine 
greatness  itself.  Such  is  God,  as  the  great  Lamb- 
history  paints  him.  Ask  we  then  for  the  man  ?  the 
man  of  the  cross  ?  this  is  he ;  not  another  Son  of  God 
better  than  the  trinity  affords,  but  the  very  same  that 
was  before,  more  lovingly  conceived,  in  that  he  has 
brought  himself  down  low  to  us,  wading  deep  in  our 
sorrows,  and  tasting  even  death  for  us  and  our  sins. 
2.  The  other  point  to  be  considered  and  corrected  is 
more  simple,  and  may  be  dispatched  more  briefly.  Thus 
it  is  an  impression  of  many  that  we  are  to  be  with  Christ, 
in  the  sense  of  beholding  him  with  our  eyes.  But  it  can 
not  be  imagined  that  we  are  to  behold  God,  whether 
in  three  persons,  or  one,  in  this  manner.  The  only 
beholding  conceivable  is  that  of  faith.  And  there  is  a 
talent  of  faith  in  our  human  nature,  that  is  much  taller 
and  closer  to  the  infinite,  than  some  of  our  wise  unbeliev- 
ers have  commonly  dared  to  conceive.  It  does  not  re- 
port things  for  knowledge,  or  cognitive  perception,  at 
some  nervous  center,  as  in  the  five  senses  ;  and  does  not 
work  below  with  them,  ranging  always  in  the  same 
field  of  matter  and  external  fact,  but  it  strikes  out 
into  a  wider  and  wholly  different,  where  things 
invisible  and  above  sense  have  their  own  other-world. 
God,  and  truth,  and  right,  and  love,  and  the  eternal 
invisible  heaven,  report  themselves  to  this  faith-talent 
when  it  is  offered  in  congenial  trust,  and  it  is  as  if  the 
general  overhead  or  whole  sky  of  the  mind  were 
quickened  with  a  sense  above  sense,  wide  enough  to 


IN   THE   FUTURE   LIFE.  465 

let  in  their  evidence.  It  glimmers  at  no  point,  as 
when  the  five  senses  take  in  their  knowledge,  but  it  is 
the  whole  consciousness  opened  believingly  to  God, 
and  the  grand  supersensible  realities  of  religion.  And 
so  firmly  pronounced  is  the  conviction  of  the  realities 
beheld  by  faith,  that  not  even  the  realities  of  the 
senses  are  more  strongly,  often  not  as  strongly,  held. 
God,  "  the  unknowable "  as  he  is  called,  will  some- 
times utter  himself  in  the  knowledge  thus  of  a  believing 
consciousness,  more  indubitably  than  a  rock  or  a 
mountain  seen  by  the  eyes.  Faith  beholds  more 
piercingly  than  they,  looks  farther  in,  sweeps  a  largei 
horizon. 

Besides,  there  is  an  impossibility,  as  regards  making 
a  heaven  about  Christ  in  terms  of  sight,  which  man}' 
have  not  considered.  All  sight  objects  are,  by  suppo* 
sition,  under  conditions  of  space.  They  spread,  they 
have  measures  of  extension,  and  the  seers  themselves 
must  have  room.  Christ  therefore  can  be  had  by  the 
eyes,  in  the  future  life,  only  as  being  at  some  point  of 
space,  and  having  his  beholders  round  him  in  space. 
Seeing,  observe,  implies  just  this,  else  we  do  not  know 
what  we  mean  by  it.  How  then  can  we  ever  be  with 
him,  where  he  is?  how  get  near  enough  to  him,  one  in 
a  million,  once  in  an  age,  to  so  much  as  look  upon 
him  ?  Instead  therefore  of  trying  how  to  sharpen  our 
apprehensions  of  Christ  by  making  it  a  case  for  sight, 
we  had  better,  far  better,  sharpen  our  ideas  of  faith, 
and  learn  its  amazing  capacity.  O  what  revelations 
of  Christ  come  to  us  even  here — greater  by  a  thou- 


466  OUR   RELATIONS   TO   CHRIST 

sand  times  than  the  mere  eye-beholders  of  the  Son  of 
Mary  ever  saw,  when  he  walked  the  earth.  How 
much  greater  then  are  to  come,  when  the  vision  of  our 
faith  is  purged,  as  it  will  be.  Ah,  if  we  conld  stop  our 
singing  "  When  faith  and  hope  shall  cease,"  and  begin 
to  sing  "  now  abideth  faith,  hope,  charity,  these 
three,"  into  what  more  glorious,  more  inspiriting  at- 
mosphere should  we  be  lifted !  And  God  forbid  our 
ever  passing  to  any  other  world  where  faith,  the 
grandest  of  all  human  powers,  has  nothing  any  more 
to  do.  Indeed  what  are  we  here  for,  when  the  matter 
is  sounded  to  the  bottom,  but  to  get  our  inward  visu- 
alises unsealed  for  the  all-perceiving,  illimitable  faith- 
sense  discovery  of  God  and  his  kingdom. 

Observe  also  this  remarkable  fact  concerning  faith, 
that  it  always  sees  the  invisible  in  forms  contributed 
by  the  visible  ;  that  is  by  what  has  before  been  seen, 
remembered,  felt  and  wonted  in  experience.  Thus  it 
is  how  often  that  persons  just  born  into  the  new  life 
are  taken  by  the  conviction  that  they  have  actually 
seen  Christ ;  which  is  true,  in  the  sense  that  he  has 
come  into  their  consciousness,  though  not  in  the  sense 
that  they  have  seen  him  with  their  eyes.  Faith  has 
no  draperies  of  its  own,  but  is  seeing  its  objects  always 
in  images  borrowed  from  sense  and  memory.  Thus 
beholding  the  state  of  the  blessed,  it  imagines  it  to  be 
a  kind  of  sky-state  and  calls  it  heaven — adding  gar- 
dens, and  rivers,  and  gold,  and  gems,  and  a  city  that 
came  down  from  God,  even  the  new  Jerusalem.  And 
so  when  the  Eternal  Son,  as  in  trinity,  is  beheld  by 


IN   THE    FUTURE    LIFE.  467 

faith  he  will  be  reelothecl  out  of  his  earthly  story,  and 
it  will  even  be  as  if  there  was  a  doubling  back  on  the 
sight  of  his  humanity.  I  do  not  say  that  our  faith- 
perception  will  see  the  prints  in  his  hands,  or  the  scars 
on  his  brow,  but  we  shall  have  him  in  the  types  of  our 
memory,  and  think  of  him  as  the  man  of  sorrows,  the 
Lamb  that  bore  our  sins,  the  buffeted,  the  crucified. 
So  that  our  being  with  him  will  be  a  beholding  leveled 
eternally  to  our  feeling,  and  a  gloriously  fresh  partici- 
pation allowed  us  in  the  flavors  of  his  humanly  divine 
society. 

Let  me  now  add  in  closing,  what  I  am  thoroughly 
aware  of,  that  I  have  not  been  trying  to  set  this  great 
world  of  the  future  in  fascinating  colors,  or  to  engage 
you  in  the  pursuit  of  it,  by  fresher  and  more  glowing  at- 
tractions. I  have  not  been  preaching  it,  but  engineering 
for  it  rather ;  I  have  not  shrunk  from  letting  it  be  a  dif- 
ficult subject.  And  my  reason  for  it  is,  the  painfully 
fixed  conviction  of  our  being  so  far  at  loose  ends  in  our 
conceptions,  that  steadiness  of  aim  in  the  heavenly 
calling  is  scarcely  at  all  permitted  us.  As  to  condi- 
tion, circumstance,  sceneries,  and  surroundings,  we  are 
indeterminate  of  course.  But  it  should  not  be  so,  in 
our  conceptions  of  Christ  himself  and  his  relations  to 
us.  For  if  we  are  striving  after  him  and  to  be  with 
him  in  a  mixture  of  contrary  and  impossible  ideas,  or 
to  think  of  him  in  a  kaleidoscopic  play  of  figures 
that  put  us  at  cross-purposes  continually  in  regard  to 
his  person,  and  to  God  and  trinity  as  related  thereto, 


168  OUR  RELATIONS  TO   CHRIST,   ETC. 

we  are  rather  distracted  and  baffled  than  helped  by 
the  inspirations  of  our  hope  itself.  Hence  to  persons 
of  intelligence  and  thoughtfulness,  there  is  a  random 
look  of  undiscerning  declamation  in  what  is  said  of  the 
great  future,  that  costs  them,  in  the  loss  of  their  re- 
spect, more  damage  than  we  often  know.  There 
ought  to  be  a  possibility  of  salvation  for  sensible 
people.  But  there  hardly  can  be,  if  we  leave  the 
great  subject  of  Christ's  future  under  vague,  impossi- 
ble, or  even  contrary  conditions.  I  have  been  try- 
ing to  initiate  a  more  fixed  conception  of  it ;  speak- 
ing in  the  conviction  that  there  is  no  other,  in  which 
the  Christian  disciple  can  better  afford  to  dig  even 
whole  years,  if  he  can  fitly  master  it.  In  no  other 
field  will  his  advances  yield  him  greater  returns  of 
strength.  In  this  study  he  will  have  his  religious 
ideas  concentrated  more  and  more  about  Christ.  He 
will  discover  a  new  glory  in  Christ,  and  conquer  a  new 
stability  centered  everlastingly  in  him.  He  will  think 
of  his  friends  who  have  already  crossed  the  river,  and 
will  seem  to  be  apprehending  a  little  what  they  have 
now  apprehended,  O  how  distinctly !  and  to  be  with 
Christ — who  is  now  become  his  clear  possibility  and 
steady  North  Star  light — he  will  hold  himself  to  the 
mark  and  make  sure  progress  onward. 


y 


^y 


on  Theological  Seminary- Spei 


1    1012  01 


15  2305 


Date  Due 


